Choosing my design studio name...
Coming up with a name for your design studio feels like it carries more weight than choosing a name for your child. There’s heaps of design studios out there, lots with smart, sticky names. And you want yours to stand out, be confident whilst representing the culture of yourself and your work.
The guidelines i set myself: It had to be sticky, authentic & confident.
The first stop for me was the same as any of my clients, working out our values, what was the authentic culture of our studio. After dissecting my work I distilled the values down to: Playful, social and experimental design.
Next: Brain Vomit. I along with friends and collaborators came up with heaps of ideas, getting all of our thoughts down. The good, the bad and the cringy. Some stonking cringers on there when i look back now.
Next Step: Deciphering the various mind maps, narrowing down and making a long list. Here’s some of the ideas...
Take Up Space / Share Your Umbrella / Something Great / Something Splendid / Rocket Studios / Lobster Creative / Rocket Studios / Team Rocket / Outside the Lines / Play to create / Mind Monkey / Mind Candy / Mind Play / Be right back, just making / This is happening / Let’s do this / Make noise /
With these I hit social media asking all our buddies which ones stuck, which ones made them curious, which ones they wanted to know more about.
At this stage it’s important to cover the obvious, is the domain name free? Bit of a hold your breath moment. And in reality, no it’s probably not. With over a billion websites it’s quite likely you’re dream name may have been taken.
So the most popular name... Outside the Line - This was one of my favourites from fairly early on. It encompasses an experimental approach to materials and process. It feels playful and unapologetic and has some nice visual connotations that we could explore within the design stages.
Outside the Line was born.
