Remembering Our Stardust Nature
Photography of Tobago Coast, by Kevin Huggins
In July 2020, I embarked on an entrepreneurial journey by launching a brand that I have wanted to start for about five years - Stardust Life Centered Design. It’s been a tumultuous journey at times, and the circumstances that we as a civilisation are experiencing seem to be characterised by constant changing, shifting and reorienting. It is my hope that this practice will create value for today and for the future in a way that allows all of us to thrive.
Black Sea Urchins - Photography by Nadia Huggins
Why Stardust
The ethos behind this work is that we are made of the same substance as all of life - stardust - and that if we remember this, live this, then we will no longer live in opposition to life but in partnership and collaboration with it. Although the idea came to me five years ago, Stardust is the culmination of ten years’ dreaming while moving. Moment by precious moment, each experience of my career has created a momentum paralleled by our evolving global paradigm - there has never been a more crucial time to do this work.
This practice is an offering, an homage, an honouring of the knowledge that our world’s system of living is undergoing its most unprecedented change. It is a microcosm of the evolution that is taking shape around the world that has found its feet in Trinidad and Tobago.
Stardust is a nature-based design strategy practice providing consultative services to create climate-safe economies. In short, it creates space for expansiveness and resilience. It is a call to changemakers, designers, scientists and business leaders alike, for fostering meaningful, feasible collaboration toward a shared future where we can all thrive.
Volcano Flora - Photography by Nadia Huggins
The Antidote to despair
Biomimicry and Life Centered design are antidotes to despair, and provide a hope-filled, generous solution toolkit for the problems of our times now that we need them most. There is a tremendous opportunity in reframing some of our most pressing challenges within the current global context. We are seeing clearly that “business as usual” will have extreme difficulty surviving, and that adaptable, resilient systems can sooner thrive. Putting life at the core of decision-making creates value for people, planet and profit while creating a culture resilience.
Stardust will begin by offering workshops with youth or corporate leadership team training, innovation development and communications strategy. To find out more about Stardust, visit stardustnature.com or follow the journey on Instagram.
A Word about Branding
In developing a symbol for the Stardust brand, I knew I wanted to lean into circular forms in nature that lent themselves to understanding small, intimate objects as well as vast galactic phenomena. That aside, it was deeply important to me that the mark would still feel “warm” or human, and not cold or removed from reality on Earth. It meant exploring the form of two circular objects, the sea urchin and the spiral. I felt inspired by these two for several reasons.
Top left to right: Sea urchin form, spiral shell, overlay illustration to final symbol. Bottom: The final mark in colour and with word mark.
The sea urchin withstands shocks and pressure because of its interlocking, distinct parts, and my goal with Stardust is to create a resilient community of impact and legacy. The spiral speaks to the grace and beauty of the Fibonacci sequence which is present in so many natural forms - an homage to ancient symbols of order but also exponential change. It is connected to Nature, Earth and the Galaxy. Together they speak to the purest intention of Stardust, which is at once cellular and massively spatial.
Colour Palette from Caribbean Landscapes
It was important to represent the Caribbean in both symbols and imagery used throughout the Stardust website and digital presence. I knew from the beginning that the work of Nadia Huggins resonated with Stardust’s mission and vision - "her work “merges documentary and conceptual practices, which explore belonging, identity, and memory through a contemporary approach focused on re-presenting Caribbean landscapes and the sea.” (more on Nadia’s website). Because so many of the bio-inspired design organisations I am know of are fully focused on nature, and lend themselves to a blue and green palette, I knew I wanted to differentiate but also speak evocatively of our humanity, rich culture and history. It meant finding tones that speak to skin tones and accent colours that were slightly unusual.
The breathtaking aerial photography by Kevin Huggins was the perfect complement to Nadia’s photography, mainly because of the brand’s focus on scale and system-level positive impact and change. Sometimes we encounter nature through our five senses and forget that we are part of something much bigger, which sustains us.
Brand Palette based on colours derived from Caribbean landscapes, and telling stories above and below the ever-present ocean that binds us all together. Photography by Nadia Huggins (landscapes and underwater photography) and by Kevin Huggins (aerials of coast and La Brea Pitch Lake).