Why is an Octahedron my logo?

Go behind the scenes on why I’m so enamoured by this forgotten shape

In choosing a logo for my brand, I knew I wanted to choose a logo that represented my brand in systems and growth strategy. After all, a logo is the visual facets of your brand, in which a brand embodies what your business is, what it stands for, how it stands out, who it’s speaking to, and it’s tone.

I know I did not need to go so deep as to write a blog post about it, but hey, I thought the journey of how I landed on an octahedron was cool, so wanted to share that with you. 

Making my brand The Optimized CEO, I knew I was going to be sharing and discussing how building systems, creating strong branding, and scaling had to do with embracing the future, but embracing the ancient and core facets of who were are, that we seem to have lost sight of, even though it’s inside us. Combining the ancient with the futuristic, the structure with the fluid was going to be paramount within The Optimized CEO.

Enter: The Octahedron. The shape of this octahedron, especially in the birds-eye view angle shown below, felt perfect as I fell upon it. And it all has to do with sacred geometry and the octahedron as one of five of the platonic shapes....

Geometry as a way of understanding the universe

In ancient times, there was a complete fascination with mathematical patterns from Pythagoras and his followers. They found these patterns in music, the stars, and various aspects of life and the universe.. From this relationship between celestial bodies and pleasant sounds, they constructed the notion of a cosmos as an ordered whole, governed by numerical proportions.

To Plato, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the intellectuals of Ancient Greece, sacred geometry and its forms held a TON of meaning. They were much past just being decorative. In the past, the fields of science, spirituality, philosophy, and creativity in arts were less separated than they are today. We can see it in most schools of learning as well: Universities produce PHD wielding professionals that don’t have a standard curiosity (though not all) in the inevitable overlaps that occur within their field of let’s say chemistry, with philosophy or social sciences. 

Plato’s model of the universe

In his dialogue the Timaeus, Plato introduced a visionary model of the universe, presenting the cosmos not as a chaotic void, but as an ordered, living, and rational entity. To bridge the gap between abstract philosophy and physical reality, he mapped the fundamental elements of nature to the five Platonic solids.

In this geometric framework, the sharp tetrahedron represents fire, the icosahedron represents water, the stable cube represents earth, the dodecahedron represents the cosmos as a whole, and the octahedron represents air.

By organizing the universe through these geometric building blocks, Plato was actively modeling, imagining, and experimenting with explanations for the material world. Although obviously this model of this universe was disproven, his cosmology stands as a brilliant early example of how creativity and rational inquiry can live together, proving that scientific imagination is just as vital as logical analysis when trying to understand our existence! 

Why the octahedron?

Going back to the octahedron, I found myself continually entranced with this shape because while undeniably stable as a shape and therefore powerful (this is the shape that diamonds, the hardest substance in the world, form into as they were formed over 3 billion years ago deep within the Earth’s crust), it felt continually transformative and ever-changing.

With its 8 triangular faces, 6 vertices, and 12 edges, each changing angle brought to the eye a new 2-dimensional shape even as it remained in its 3d form (Want to see what I’m talking about? My new website is loading and it's going to be right on the homepage!). The octahedron was symmetrical, strong, balanced and as a sacred geometric shape, its representation of air meant it was associated with movement, space, fluidity and change.

All features The Optimized CEO embraces in its philosophy within creating systems for growth. The octahedron has structure, but that didn’t mean it's rigid. Far from it, in fact.

It's all about perspective

As the octahedron tumbles down it starts in this angle that Leonard da Vinci illustrated for the book De Divina Proportione by Luca Pacioli; from above and favouring the bottom triangle over the top triangle. From this angle it’s unrecognizable at first glance what this could be, but then you view from other angles and the octahedron begins to reveal itself.

A few tumbles...

rolls...

And falls later,

The octahedron is clear to see.

The octahedron always stays the same, but with a few degrees in an angle change it manages to look completely unrecognizable! And out of alll the other platonic solids, this shapeshifting happens at its most dynamic level with the octahedron.

The cube and the pyramid do not seem to transmute as dramatically with a change of the angle, and the Icosahedron and tetrahedron are spheric in shape unlike the octahedron and as such are not prone to such dramatic changes in shape upon shifting angles. The octahedron at different vantage points, reveal different truths within itself.

Planvs (Planus) means Plain or flat, referring to its standard regular geometric form. Vacvvs (Vacuus) means Empty or hollow, illustrated by Leonardo as a skeletal framework layout so the viewer can see through to the rear edges.

Why this matters

Why did I have to create a whole blog post about a logo 99% of even my leads or clients might never think about? Because just like I preach about creativity, judgment, and perspective becoming more important, I live it too.

So much of the stories we tell ourselves make up who we are. On a subconscious level our body, our midns, and our hearts responds to that as well. The octahedron is a shape we all recognize; it’s in diamonds, in popular video games, it's used as special dice. It feels familiar yet it has not been front and centre in our lives and learning like a cube, pyramid, or sphere was for 3-dimensional shapes. This hollow version is definitely not used on a popular level. I think it’s time for the octahedron to get it’s shine, especially in an AI era where the future is uncertain, and the past is forgotten. What we know to be true at out core should be fished out, untangled, and made to be recognizable again. 

It’s time to learn optimization as fluidity in thought, bring systems and creativity together, leave space for movement in structure, give total respect to measurements but not forget your intuition, strive for efficiency but leave room for intentional friction, and know that having perspective and keeping balance is a continual practice in a world with ever-changing context and relationships between you, your business, and the world outside it. Thanks for reading.