The formation of Formaspace.
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Torque News
Brand Spanking New Client Work
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Above Board Workbenches approached
us to give them a brand
spanking new positioning, moniker
and mark. The old name, "Above
Board," spoke
to the important company value
of integrity, but founder Jeff
Turk, a true visionary in his
own right, wanted something
more forward-looking.
Our brand
strategists
identified
a unique
positioning
for Above
Board,
summed
up in the
phrase
"what's
next,"
which then
allowed
our
wordsmiths
and design
gurus to
get cracking.
Formaspace,
as a name,
mark, and
unique
URL, opened
vast opportunities
for the
company
to build
its base
further
in the
marketplace.
Launched
January
1 in print
and online,
the name
is drawing
great responses
from top
customers.
A nice
start to
the new
year, if
we do say
so ourselves.
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Nick's
the
name.
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Torque News
Staff Update
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We're happy to welcome a new addition to the Torque creative staff. Designer
Nick Farrey joins Torque as an intern after having worked as a freelance designer
for firms such as rule29 and Hans Design. A graduate of the graphic design
program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Nick joins fellow
U of I graphic design alums Adam Lilly and Ian Law in the day to day of crafting
kick-ass brands for Torque's clients. Welcome aboard, Nick!
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Hello, my name is.
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Design Fundamentals
By Adam Lilly
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Ancient Sumerians believed that to name something was to give it life.
They also believed that being true to your name meant being true to your nature.
The logical follow-up question: If giving something a name
gives it life, how do you give life to a name?
Companies and brands inevitably have to live up to the expectations and promise
that their names set in the minds of customers and consumers. Good names capture
the imagination, but making a name memorable also has a lot to do with
how you present it. Customers will remember you if you pay off your name with
a visual mark that fulfills the promise your name implies.
Over the years we've had the privilege of creating many a brand, beginning
with a name, and then fulfilling the promise with a great logo.
When Goose Island's brewmaster named one of his new reserve beers, we knew
we had our work cut out for us. He named the beer Matilda, after the countess
who founded the abbey at Orval, birthplace of a famous trappist ale. Now
that was a doozy: how do you accurately embody a woman who founded one of the
world's most famous abbies? To get it right, we had to pour over books of period
typography. We scoured the typography of heraldry, illuminated manuscripts
and old storybooks. In the end, we created a mark that spoke of royalty, fantasy
and historicism.
When we named IT Lighthouse, a small information technology support firm, we
faced the challenge of creating a mark that made reference to a
lighthouse without feeling like a misplaced nautical reference.
We reduced the visual treatment of a lighthouse to just the signal
light. Then we melded that visual with the idea of an electrical spark
moving along a circuit. The resulting mark successfully married two visually
disparate worlds into one memorable mark that paid off the name perfectly.
After we named Pangea, a pediatric conference focused on bringing together the
two distant worlds of traditional and homeopathic medicine, we created
a mark that spoke to medical practitioners and communicated the idea of
a billion-year-old supercontinent. To do this, we created two unique
shapes to represent the two sides of the medical community. Our interlocked
shapes created a "plus" at the center. The plus sign represents the conference's
focus on healing. In this case, healing applies not only to patients but to the
divide between two fiercely divided factions of the medical community.
There's no denying the importance of a name. But the face you give to a name
may be just as important. Think about it this way: If everybody named
Bob looked the same, you'd have a hard time distinguishing
between Bob 1 and Bob 2. It's what people look like that helps us remember who
is who, and the same goes for brands. After saying "Hello my name is . .
. " make
sure people remember you, by living up to the promise of your name.
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