Water Temple is an oasis in the middle of Burning Man. It serves as a camp where attendees can escape the heat of the Black Rock Desert and find refuge in a sanctuary filled with lush greenery, cool shade, refreshing misting stations, and spiritual healing sessions. I was asked by the founders to create a brand that reflected this mission for Water Temple.

Design Process

After meeting with the client, I designed this version of the Water Temple logo. The keywords that I kept in mind while creating these this was “growth”, “safety”, and “tranquility”. After learning that the physical location also incorporated a lot of foliage, I felt it was important to emphasize plants in the logo design itself. It both refers to the actual location while simultaneously representing the physical and spiritual growth created by this nurturing environment. Additionally, the leaves are also a call back to the Gates of Heaven in Bali, a key inspiration for the founders of the Water Temple. Finally, I added a water drop “feeding” the growing plant to, not only further emphasize growth and nurturing, but to show to even the most highly disoriented Burning Man participant that water can be found at this camp.

The clients ended up wanting something more obviously tied to the Gates of Heaven (pictured below) as well as the Balinese Water Temple. As a result, they asked me to depict the actual gates themselves while maintaining the previous style.

Gates of Heaven (Pura Lempuyang), Bali

For the next, and final, round. I was asked to place plants on the “Gates of Heaven” version of the above logos (V2.1) as well as to include water drop ripples. While asking for this edit, the client described to me that they wanted something “between this version and the previous version (V2 and V1 respectively).” As a result, I came up with two types of logo designs. Ultimately, they ended up loving and selecting, V3.4.