My wife and I ordered a brick oven pizza.  I ordered a beer and my wife wanted her usual Diet Pepsi.  She came to the table with this cup.  I notice icons and symbology everywhere.  

The Pepsi brand is iconic.  I am starting to see many famous brands latching onto iconic symbology to communicate their own brand uniqueness.    It is an attempt to connect with consumers and their interests and passions.  There are about a dozen icons on this cup that resonate with me and my interests.  Many of them look similar to Mikons that people have made in Mikons.com. 

Keep your eyes open for the intersection of branding, symbols, and icons.  Share with me where you see some companies doing cool things with icons, iconography, and symbology.

Many people still ask me, “Where the hell did you get the idea for Mikons?”

I am a cyclist, I am a hack, but I love it. While watching Lance Armstrong’s last year in the Tour De France (before he came back in 2009) I noticed that his  his time-trial bike’s disk wheel with small icons that represented his life journey. Lance then described the meaning of each of the icons.   Those symbols spoke something, even beyond the words that Lance used to describe them.

The power of the story that those symbols gripped me.  I have always been fascinated with the ability of art to communicate beyond words.  Icons do it with eloquent economy.  Nike commissioned Futura, a storied graffiti artist, to make some 40 icons that told a story of Lance’s heroic life.

What if there was a website where people make icons and symbols that had meaning to them?  Could icons be a new way for people to connect and communicate?  I thought so then, and I think so now.  Join me in make the sublime connections that symbols have been doing for mankind since the beginning of time.

Try Mikons.comto make your own mikons and MikonMixers.com to make iconic conversation starters at parties and networking events.

I am an entrepreneur. It is not a badge of courage or something to brag about, it is just what I love. Hey, Love is our gift to Others.

This mikon symbolizes the journey of the entrepreneur. First, the e receives the dream from outside-the-box. All dreams live beyond the box.

Once on the path the trajectory is steep. Then comes all the advice, then the fear, and finally the conformity. The conspiracy between the fear and the box bounces the entrepreneur around.

The dream has lost its vision keeper…the Love has gone. The hard knocks of life inside the box drops the entrepreneur to the bottom.

If the entrepreneur still has the dream and the courage and the love and remembers from whence it came, the entrepreneur breaks out of the box and connects with his dream again, then the sky is the limit, not the box.

To make your own symbols that connect you with the rest of the universe, go to Mikons.com.  For fun interactive party and networking events try MikonMixers.com

The Summer Solstice is upon us.  Below is a brief factual and religious history and meaning of the Summer Solstice.  It was taken from this link by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.    The sun symbol to the right is an ancient symbol that represents our solar star.  Wikipedia has an intesting narrative on this and several other sun symbols.

People around the world have observed spiritual and religious seasonal days of celebration during the month of June. Most have been religious holy days which are linked in some way to the summer solstice. On this day, typically JUN-21, the daytime hours are at a maximum in the Northern hemisphere, and night time is at a minimum. It is officially the first day of summer. It is also referred to as Midsummer because it is roughly the middle of the growing season throughout much of Europe.

“Solstice” is derived from two Latin words: “sol” meaning sun, and “sistere,” to cause to stand still. This is because, as the summer solstice approaches, the noonday sun rises higher and higher in the sky on each successive day. On the day of the solstice, it rises an imperceptible amount, compared to the day before. In this sense, it “stands still.” 

The seasons of the year are caused by the 23.5° tilt of the earth’s axis. Because the earth is rotating like a top or gyroscope, the North Pole points in a fixed direction continuously — towards a point in space near the North Star. But the earth is also revolving around the sun. During half of the year, the southern hemisphere is more exposed to the sun than is the northern hemisphere. During the rest of the year, the reverse is true. At noontime in the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears high in the sky during summertime, and low during winter. The time of the year when the sun reaches its maximum elevation occurs on the summer solstice — the day with the greatest number of daylight hours. It typically occurs on, or within a day or two of, JUN-21 — the first day of summer. The lowest elevation occurs about DEC-21 and is the winter solstice — the first day of winter, when the night time hours reach their maximum.

Significance of the summer solstice:

In pre-historic times, summer was a joyous time of the year for those Aboriginal people who lived in the northern latitudes. The snow had disappeared; the ground had thawed out; warm temperatures had returned; flowers were blooming; leaves had returned to the deciduous trees. Some herbs could be harvested, for medicinal and other uses. Food was easier to find. The crops had already been planted and would be harvested in the months to come. Although many months of warm/hot weather remained before the fall, they noticed that the days were beginning to shorten, so that the return of the cold season was inevitable. 

The first (or only) full moon in June is called the Honey Moon. Tradition holds that this is the best time to harvest honey from the hives.  

This time of year, between the planting and harvesting of the crops, was the traditional month for weddings. This is because many ancient peoples believed that the “grand [sexual] union” of the Goddess and God occurred in early May at Beltaine. Since it was unlucky to compete with the deities, many couples delayed their weddings until June. June remains a favorite month for marriage today. In some traditions, “newly wed couples were fed dishes and beverages that featured honey for the first month of their married life to encourage love and fertility. The surviving vestige of this tradition lives on in the name given to the holiday immediately after the ceremony: The Honeymoon.” ₁₄

Midsummer celebrations in ancient and modern times:

Most societies in the northern hemisphere, ancient and modern, have celebrated a festival on or close to Midsummer:

• Ancient Celts: Druids, the priestly/professional/diplomatic corps in Celtic countries, celebrated Alban Heruin (“Light of the Shore“). It was midway between the spring Equinox (Alban Eiler; “Light of the Earth“) and the fall Equinox (Alban Elfed; “Light of the Water“). “This midsummer festival celebrates the apex of Light, sometimes symbolized in the crowning of the Oak King, God of the waxing year. At his crowning, the Oak King falls to his darker aspect, the Holly King, God of the waning year…” ₁₃ The days following Alban Heruin form the waning part of the year because the days become shorter.
• Ancient China: Their summer solstice ceremony celebrated the earth, the feminine, and the yin forces. It complemented the winter solstice which celebrated the heavens, masculinity and yang forces.
• Ancient Gaul: The Midsummer celebration was called Feast of Epona, named after a mare goddess who personified fertility, sovereignty and agriculture. She was portrayed as a woman riding a mare.
• Ancient Germanic, Slav and Celtic tribes in Europe: Ancient Pagans celebrated Midsummer with bonfires. “It was the night of fire festivals and of love magic, of love oracles and divination. It had to do with lovers and predictions, when pairs of lovers would jump through the luck-bringing flames…” It was believed that the crops would grow as high as the couples were able to jump. Through the fire’s power, “…maidens would find out about their future husband, and spirits and demons were banished.” Another function of bonfires was to generate sympathetic magic: giving a boost to the sun’s energy so that it would remain potent throughout the rest of the growing season and guarantee a plentiful harvest. ₆
• Ancient Rome: The festival of Vestalia lasted from JUN-7 to JUN-15. It was held in honor of the Roman Goddess of the hearth, Vesta. Married women were able to enter the shrine of Vesta during the festival. At other times of the year, only the vestal virgins were permitted inside.
• Ancient Sweden: A Midsummer tree was set up and decorated in each town. The villagers danced around it. Women and girls would customarily bathe in the local river. This was a magical ritual, intended to bring rain for the crops.
• Christian countries: After the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the feast day of St. John the Baptist was set as JUN-24. It “is one of the oldest feasts, if not the oldest feast, introduced into both the Greek and Latin liturgies to honour a saint.” ₁₆ Curiously, the feast is held on the alleged date of his birth. Other Christian saints’ days are observed on the anniversary of their death. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains that St. John was “filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb…[thus his] birth…should be signalized as a day of triumph.” ₁₆ His feast day is offset a few days after the summer solstice, just as Christmas is fixed a few days after the winter solstice. ₁ “Just as John was the forerunner to Jesus, midsummer forecasts the eventual arrival of” the winter solstice circa DEC-21. 
• Essenes: This was a Jewish religious group active in Palestine during the 1st century CE. It was one of about 24 Jewish groups in the country — the only one that used a solar calendar. Other Jewish groups at the time included the Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, followers of John, and followers of Yeshua (Jesus). Archaeologists have found that the largest room of the ruins at Qumran (location of the Dead Sea Scrolls) appears to be a sun temple. The room had been considered a dining room by earlier investigators, in spite of the presence of two altars at its eastern end. At the time of the summer solstice, the rays of the setting sun shine at 286 degrees along the building’s longitudinal axis, and illuminate the eastern wall. The room is oriented at exactly the same angle as the Egyptian shrines dedicated to the sun. Two ancient authorities — the historian Josephus and the philosopher Filon of Alexandria — had written that the Essenes were sun worshipers. Until recently, their opinion had been rejected by modern historians. ₁₉
• Native Americans:
  • The Natchez tribe in the southern U.S. “worshiped the sun and believed that their ruler was descended from him. Every summer they held a first fruits ceremony.” Nobody was allowed to harvest the corn until after the feast. ₂
  • Males in the Hopi tribe dressed up as Kachinas – the dancing spirits of rain and fertility who were messengers between humanity and the Gods. At Midsummer, the Kachinas were believed to leave the villages to spend the next six months in the mountains, where they were believed to visit the dead underground and hold ceremonies on their behalf. ₂
  • Native Americans have created countless stone structures linked to equinoxes and solstices. Many are still standing. One was called Calendar One by its modern-day discoverer. It is in a natural amphitheatre of about 20 acres in size in Vermont. From a stone enclosure in the center of the bowl, one can see a number of vertical rocks and other markers around the edge of the bowl “At the summer solstice, the sun rose at the southern peak of the east ridge and set at a notch at the southern end of the west ridge.” The winter solstice and the equinoxes were similarly marked. ₅
  • The Bighorn Medicine Wheel west of Sheridan, WY is perhaps the most famous of the 40 or more similar “wheels” on the high plains area of the Rocky Mountains. Mostly are located in Canada. At Bighorn, the center of a small cairn, that is external to the main wheel, lines up with the center of the wheel and the sun rising at the summer equinox. Another similar sighting cairn provides a sighting for three dawn-rising stars: Aldebaran, Rigel and Sirius. A third cairn lines up with fourth star: Fomalhaut. The term “medicine wheel” was coined by Europeans; it was a term used to describe anything native that white people didn’t understand. ₁₇
• Prehistoric Europe: Many remains of ancient stone structures can be found throughout Europe. Some date back many millennia BCE. Many appear to have religious/astronomical purposes; others are burial tombs. These structures were built before writing was developed. One can only speculate on the significance of the summer solstice to the builders. Perhaps the most famous of these structures is Stonehenge, a megalith monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. It was built in three stages, between circa 3000 and 1500 BCE. “The circular bank and ditch, double circle of ‘bluestones’ (spotted dolerite), and circle of sarsen stones (some with white lintels), are concentric, and the main axis is aligned on the midsummer sunrise–an orientation that was probably for ritual rather than scientific purposes.₄ Four “station stones” within the monument form a rectangle whose shorter side also points in the direction of the midsummer sunrise. ₁₅

To make your own symbols that connect you with the rest of the universe, go to Mikons.com.  For fun interactive party and networking events try MikonMixers.com

A mentor once asked me, “What does a bumble bee do?”  I answered, “Make honey.”  He said, “He thinks he is just making honey too.  But he is really spreading Life.”

Whatever you think you are doing – remember if it is constructive you are spreading Life.  You are adding to the goodness of the world and life.  It is not how much, but how well.

Mikons.com is a place where you can create symbols to express your ideas and connect with people.

Mikons and Words are merely symbols that attempt to describe something; a mirrored image that only reflects the surface.  They simply point to the direction of what it really is.  The word goldfish isn’t a goldfish.  An image of tulip isn’t a tulip either. And my idea of them is not the same as what they really are. 

Take pause when you find yourself attached to an idea of something.  Ask yourself, “is my idea of this really what it is?”.  Words and symbols simply resonate with our experiences and beliefs.  Their meaning comes from the context of our lifes.  Meaning is in the eye of the beholder as it were.  So be aware of what you believe.  A false belief can render meaning meaningless and words and symbols pointless.

How many people does it take to get a banana from a farm in Costa Rica to a table in Cleveland?

I wear this t-shirt to start that conversation.  It is an important conversation because it shows that we all are vital to getting on in this world.  However, the first thing that most people say when they see me wearing this shirt is…”Is that a banana on your shirt or are you just happy to see me.”

So how many people?  Would you believe over one million.

Sure, think about it.  The bananas must be harvested by farmers.  And those farmers need food and shelter themselves.  They need to rely on other people to give them food and build their houses.  They need machinery to harvest the bananas and transport them to market.  People and companies need to organize to make those things and offer those services.   The bananas go on ships  and into ports before the go to your store.  Think of the thousands of people involved in making a grocery store run.  When you add up all the people necessary to get your food on your table it is amazing.  It is really something to be thankful for.

So if you dont think your job is important or if you dont think someone else’s job is important, think again and be grateful for someone doing a job well-done.

You make make a tshirt like this, that can start a conversation and make a connection at mikons.com.  Or you can make a set of stickers for a gathering to start other conversations at mikonmixers.com.

People have been communicating with symbols since the dawn of man.  American Indians carved images into rocks to speak a language of symbols.  They were communicating things about their lives like religion, food, tribal happenings.

The word petroglyph has Greek origins that means “rock carving”.  Here is an example of a many symbols carved into a sandstone rock face.  Over time rock faces get a varnished coating that can be etched into like this one.

This is an interesting site that is a good place to start to learn more about petroglyphs, particularly in North America  http://www.crystalinks.com/petroglyphs.html

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