Brand
So with our name and concept solidified, we had finally established our identity. It was now time to put a face to it all. We needed a logo to represent our site.
It had to be fun and fresh, but most importantly unique and recognizable. We engaged the services of a logo designer and went through numerous logo concepts. Here are some that were proposed:
This is a WPSimpleViewerGallery
All were rejected.
The revolving shopping doors in the shape of a Roman numeral X was clever conceptually, but aesthetically, the style was not what we had in mind. It simply looked like two intersecting planes. We wanted something with more curves and charm.
Not completely satisfied with any of these, we asked the designer to craft one more. He had saved the best for last and delivered his coup de grace. None of the earlier concepts were a hit for us, until he debuted this little guy:
This is a WPSimpleViewerGallery
The Tenporium monster. Courtesy of Nido.
The inspiration behind this was to represent “consume” for consumer products and the “monster consumes all” concept came to mind. It was a brilliant angle, and the connection to our site was subtle and thought-provoking. Visually, it was simple, clean, and charming. Its air of simplicity and purity made the logo identifiable and memorable.
To stay in tune with the logo, our tagline was just as simple: Consumer Driven. Feed the Beast.
It was short, sweet, and captured the essence of the site. The double entendre was slick too.
Identity
What’s in a name? We knew what to call our website, but what exactly was our website?
As a start, we had the original concept for a blog about top 10 things in general. And after all, it was this initial concept that drove us to our name, but we weren’t sure if it was one we wanted to run with.
Why should only our opinions be expressed as opposed to that of anyone else? Doing so would be bias and limiting, selling ourselves short as well as everyone else. We wanted to provide a platform upon which anyone could provide their input and decide what the top ten things are.
With that thought, we decided to ride the “web 2.0″ wave. The site was going to be driven by user-generated content and collective intelligence. But instead of doing top ten things in general for anything and everything, we wanted to narrow the scope. We weren’t sure what top ten “things” we were going to focus on, so we turned to our name to help us define our niche.
We played the game of word association again, but in reverse. In choosing our name, we tried to see what words our idea brought to mind. This time we wanted to see what ideas our name elicited. From the word emporium, the thoughts that naturally came to mind were shopping and consumer products. The scope of our site became apparent: Top Ten Consumer Products. We would enable users to collectively determine the top ten consumer products in various categories and also provide product reviews while they were at it.
With that, our concept was solidified and Tenporium’s purpose was established.
Check out the About section for a more detailed explanation.
Name
Ironically, we came up with our name before we even established what our site was going to be about. We had a name with no real identity. But the name actually gave us direction and helped us define the purpose of our site. So although we did things a little backwards, it really helped us move forward.
The initial concept was to just write a blog about top 10 things in general. It was going to be about anything top 10 with no particular focus. Playing a game of word association, the words that came to mind to represent these ideas were:
| Idea | Word |
|---|---|
| Top 10 | Ten |
| Anything, Everything, Variety, Miscellaneous Stuff |
Emporium |
Enter words into the Name Generator:
Ten + Emporium = Tenporium
Ok, we didn’t need a name generator for that.
