From Keyword to Iconic: Inside the Making of Ọkụ's Visual Identity
How a jewellery brand found its light, and its look
When Ganiru reached out in August 2025 to share that she was finally putting her jewellery brand out into the world, the news was met with genuine excitement on our end. Building a brand had been on her list for a long time, but the road to the starting line had not been without its challenges. Over a FaceTime call one Saturday afternoon, she laid out her vision: brand visuals that matched all the beautiful jewellery ideas she had been holding onto. With a full plate of ongoing work at the time, we agreed on an October start date and asked her to send a brief first.
In that brief, she shared the meaning of the brand name alongside a list of keywords essential to the brand. “Light”, “Sculptural”, and “Wearable Art” were all on that list, and that’s where the work began.
The Logo
The first order of business was the logo. Time was carved out on a quiet Saturday at one of our favourite cafes for an afternoon of sketching grounded in a week’s worth of collected references. Prior to that session, the initial keyword list had been expanded based on a deeper reading of Ganiru’s brief and a developing understanding of what she was building. Three additional keywords were added, and from there, the references were narrowed down to a working six.
Because this brand felt close to home, the sketching process got a little ambitious. At one point, a rather long rabbit hole into Uli Igbo opened up. The sketches were eventually narrowed down to the strongest contenders, though it wasn’t an easy cull. These were shared with Ganiru, and an in-depth conversation followed about the different ways each sketch engaged meaningfully with the brand name.
When the final choice was made, it felt right. Before that call ended, Ganiru said something that reframed the rest of the project:
“Ọkụ should be a form of self-expression. People are worried about being bold, and Ọkụ will offer them a way to take small steps towards self-expression. Ọkụ exists to help people feel seen in a good way, and let them take up space. Show yourself, shine your light. I want people to feel self-assured and beautiful without hiding. We are all wonderfully complex, I don’t think anybody is simple.”
That felt like permission to think further outside the box, and from there, the work expanded accordingly.
The final version of the Ọkụ logo features a construction of letters built out of a few basic shapes paired with a recognisable logomark. The “Baste A” font by Lift Type was discovered during this phase, and the character of the letters was exactly what was needed. According to Lift Type, Baste “explores the vernacular aesthetic and alternates between the softness of the seaside and the radicalness of an arid downtown.” What drew us in was the shape of the “O”. Specifically, the way its rounded edges seemed to inform the entire appearance of the letter, even as the letterforms maintained a distinctly rectangular quality without crossing into geometric territory. The Ọkụ wordmark was built around this concept. It was important that the wordmark be just as opinionated as the logo mark, and both elements needed to hold their own while creating a strong enough impression to function across multiple applications. The addition of subscript dots brought it all together.
There’s something satisfying about the way the letter “K” sits comfortably between the two vowels, but the logomark itself is what truly landed. What began in the sketch phase had become an ambigrammic logomark: one that represented the fullness of “Ọkụ” in an artistic, considered way. With all letters incorporated, it served as the ideal counterpart to the wordmark. The moment we noticed that when turned on its side it resembled a dancing form, the decision was sealed.
Colour & Pattern
A few weeks into the logo work, an update call with Ganiru turned to the subject of colour. There was a brief moment of mild panic when it was revealed that the palette was going to include a pattern not as a supplementary element for occasional use in brand collateral, but as an intentional, active part of the design language. Ọkụ is a call to stop hiding. The palette needed to reflect that.
Ganiru was asked to set aside every colour assumption she’d been holding and start fresh. She was given some focused homework: curate a handful of strategic references and share them. What came back was a collection of colours that command a second look in any combination. Every colour felt like it belonged; every colour had something to say. This palette is an amalgamation of the places Ganiru has been, the ones that feel most true to her, and the ones Ọkụ is headed towards— with all the Flames, of course.
Soft Voltage, the green, is an electrifying interpretation of a colour that often functions as a grounding anchor in palettes of this kind. The design rule that emerged was guided by a detail Ganiru had shared early on: in her wardrobe, green is a neutral. The question driving every decision became: how would a neutral with an attitude behave? After Hours (plum), Cheeky Petal (pink), Almost Blue (grey), and Creamstone (”white”) all followed a similar pattern of exploration and realisation. Slow Burn (teracotta) took a slightly different route, born from the Chief Flame’s early memories and childhood experiences, but arrived at the right destination in the end.
Ọkụ’s pattern carries its own significance. Words hold power, and affirmations are one of the most direct ways of engaging that power. The vision for this pattern— which would eventually reach the hands of every Flame who purchases and unboxes an Ọkụ package— was that it would function as a confirmation of positive and powerful things. A short poem was composed in Igbo with the help of friends of the Studio. Loosely translated, it means: “my light is good, and I will shine shine shine.” Each letter of the poem was then deconstructed, reconstructed, and transformed through a combination of pencil work on Procreate and detailed refinement in Affinity Designer. Pattern alignment and extensive scale testing followed, and the Ọkụ pattern was born. She’s been iconic from the start.
Brand Architecture & Typography
Bringing all of these elements together was a natural continuation of the work already documented. As the project progressed, key ideas and decisions were recorded, and we listened carefully for what the brand was communicating about its own identity. That documentation grew into Ọkụ’s brand architecture, anchored by a Manifesto that opens with a single declaration: “The negotiation ends here.” Ọkụ, as a channel for a light that is already in abundance. The architecture also contains the brand pillars and brand voice, among other core brand collateral. Given how central this material is to the brand, we’re unable to share further details here.
Typography presented one of the most rewarding and demanding design challenges of this project. The starting point was clear: Ọkụ is a serif font brand. From there, the search began for a pairing of font families that could do the necessary heavy lifting. The requirements were specific: fonts that would locate Ọkụ comfortably within the class of global fashion brands it belongs to, that were affordable to license and maintain, and that communicated genuine craftsmanship without taking itself too seriously. The process took approximately three weeks.
About a week in, the “Romie” font was discovered, and it solved a great many of the problems on the list. The sticking point was licensing cost, which, for this particular project, outweighed the other considerations. Many serif fonts were encountered along the way. One of them, Taviraj, had originally been crafted for use in Thai, and it looked striking in every combination tested. It passed every challenge put to it. Initially shortlisted for its resemblance to Romie, it quickly proved it deserved the frontman role on its own terms.
For the secondary font, Outfit, a long list of geometric sans serifs was considered rather than defaulting to the more obvious grotesque route. The instinct was that a geometric sans would outperform a grotesque when paired with the header font, and that instinct proved correct. The balance is exceptional. A third script font was added for moments requiring a softer touch: used sparingly, reserved for hero moments where it can hold the attention without heavy support from the other two. We picked Caveat for this.
On the Process
This project pushed both client and studio outside of familiar territory. There were moments of second-guessing: on colour, on logo text treatment, and many other decisions that felt uncertain in the moment. What kept things moving was the work done early on to establish a clear sense of what the destination should feel like. That shared understanding meant that even without a defined final state from the outset, the arrival point could be recognised when it was reached. The result is a brand that Ganiru is proud of, with visuals to match all of the hard work and history that comes with it.
Warble Studio is looking forward to working on more projects of this nature, and we look forward to working with you this year.
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