Sonoran Miniature Systems

Sonoran Miniature Systems

social media branding / weekend project

I started painting tabletop miniatures in 2022 as a natural extension of other hobbies I picked back up during the pandemic. In 2025, I felt confident enough in my work to start sharing them on Instagram, where I was already following other accounts dedicated to miniature painting.

 

Purpose

After a couple weeks of posting and gaining followers, I decided that my account deserved some branding.

I was (and continue to be) frustrated with the amount of AI generated content on the platform and that includes account logos.

I don’t blame hobbyists (who aren’t also designers) for leaning on AI tools to save time and effort, but I know I wanted to make something less trendy and more aspirational of the science fiction universe I was immersed in.

 

Inspiration & Ideas

I was inspired by the imagery and iconography within the Battletech franchise, modernist utopian and space agency concept art, and vintage scale modeling magazine graphics.

 

I let logo iteration guide naming, and ended up going with something that paid tribute to my former home in the desert… and because the abbreviation lent itself to some cool type treatment.

 

Branding Assets

The orange is meant to evoke the desert terrain of a distant planet (or Arizona). The dark gray is meant to evoke the vast emptiness of deep space and social media.

 
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