Tattooing Your Own Business Logo: A Blue Cat from the Cafe Downstairs

This piece was tattooed on the second floor, but its story starts on the first. The little cat is one of the characters our artist designed for Portcha, the matcha cafe right under the studio, a cafe our artist also co-owns.

The person in the chair was a partner in Portcha and the founder of Portjolio, a platform for artists and creators. In other words, this job stayed entirely in the family: the designer holds shares in the cafe, and so does the client. 🐱

One business, one tattoo

He told us about a personal tradition. Every time he builds a new business, he gets its logo or symbol tattooed. Each venture genuinely costs blood and sweat, so a tattoo is the most honest receipt there is: it hurts for real, it costs something real, and it stays.

The fun part of this piece was the selection round. The artist drew the cat in several poses, numbered them, and cut them into little paper pieces laid out on the table like stickers to choose from. The winner: the cat gripping a ledge and peeking over, that exact pose every cat makes when it needs to know what you are doing.

Choosing a pose from five paper cutouts

For small line work we normally recommend black ink, because it ages best. Here, though, the colour is the meaning. This deep blue is Portcha's brand colour. In black it would still be a lovely cat, but it would no longer be that shop's cat. A small trade in longevity was worth the truth of the colour.

While writing this article we are also attaching a photo of a certain deadpan white cat who resembles the line drawing suspiciously closely. We will let readers decide who inspired whom. 😸

Why blue ink

If you are thinking about tattooing your own logo, the rules we work by: simple shapes live on skin far longer than fine detail, a character or symbol usually works better than a full line of text, and stamp-small is the right size for this style of line. If your real logo is complex, we help distill it into a line version that still reads as your brand.

The placement chosen was the back of the upper arm, exactly where a t-shirt sleeve ends. The cat hangs on quietly, easy to show, easy to keep private.

What kind of logo works as a tattoo

Our favourite angle on this one: in this same building, the ground floor whisks matcha next to this character every day, and the floor above tattooed the same character onto a partner's arm. If you come in for a tattoo and want to meet the brand's actual four-legged world, walk one flight down, or read our story about Portcha, the matcha cafe on floor one.

If you want to mark your own venture

If you have a business, a project or a milestone you want recorded permanently, bring the logo or symbol and let's talk, at @naive.flora.tattoo, or browse the flash catalogue first. The studio is on Phahonyothin 32/1 in Sena Nikhom, Chatuchak, open daily 10:00 to 20:00, from ฿1,500. Thank you, hardworking partner, for letting floor two put floor one on record. 💙