and I’m documenting it on Medium.
Today I woke up with the burning desire to get my project on the road. Conscious that it would be hard to do so without a name and a logo, I sat myself down and did some brainstorming. A lot of it. I took a pad of paper and a pen, opened a Thesaurus and Dictionary tab on Chrome and got to work.
The first question I asked myself was the following: Is it better to come up with a logo first or the name first? After some thought, I concluded that I the name is more important as it is three-dimensional whereas the logo is one-dimensional. What I mean by that is that the name can be said, read and seen whereas the logo can only be seen.
I started asking Google to show me the coolest and most unique words in the English vocabulary. Unsatisfied, I went on to search for cool and unique words in the French vocabulary. Uninspired by the results I was getting, I started reading pages of the English dictionary.
If my interest peaked on a particular word, I would due-diligently expand my search to see if it was already taken or if it was associated with something shady. More often than not, the name I was evaluating was already taken.
On my pad of paper, I started putting random words together. I studied anagrams. I looked up Greek mythology. I went on department stores’ websites where I could find long lists of brand names to see if I could find any inspiration there.
The hours flew by and I had yet to find a winner.
If finding a name for a brand is this challenging, how challenging is it to find a name for a newborn? Whatever name you pick for the little one is the name that will stick for the rest of its life. It better be good, I thought to myself. It better be joke-free, funny-translation free and easily pronounceable throughout the world.
I started to dig deeper. I thought about the brand as a whole. What do I want my brand to represent? What values, messages and morals do I want to convey through the products that I’ll be selling? I thought about who I was as a person. What I do every day. I thought about my past triumphs. My hardships. The obstacles I overcame. The life I created for myself through overcoming those hardships and obstacles. The beautiful life that I get to live now, because I chose the more difficult route. Because I was able to overcome the challenges that I imposed on myself. The future name has to encompass all of that and then some.
On a personal note and perhaps a philosophical level, it feels as if I am now finally blooming after surmounting the fiery challenges and obstacles that I encountered and overcame growing up. This got me thinking; everything that has ever felt good, was difficult to obtain. In recent years, I’ve lost 20 kilos. That’s 44 pounds. I did so by going to the gym and tightening the bolts around my dieting habits. I felt like I was walking through fire. Fast-forward to today. I feel like all of my hard work is finally paying off, in dividends. I feel like I’m blooming.
It was through these beautiful, cinematographic and nostalgic thoughts that I finally came up with a suitable name.
Firebloom.
I like the way it sounds. I like what it represents. I like the way it looks, aesthetically. Going forward, the name of my brand is officially Firebloom.
Like everything, half of you reading this will like it, the other half, maybe not so much. What’s important is that I like it. It’s my brand. I name it how I want to name it.
Happy as I was after finding a name, I took a nap. When I woke up, I felt like I had been transported to a new dimension, one where my brand was gradually legitimizing itself in my mind thanks to its newly found name. I sat there in bed, thinking about it. It does have a nice ring to it.
My brain veered into thinking about logos that would nicely complement the name Firebloom. Ideas came rushing in. Creativity was striking. I had to make good use of it before it vanished until an unforeseeable moment in the future.
Excited, I hurried onto my computer to open Photoshop and Illustrator so that I could start sketching logos. To my surprise, I came up with a design I really liked relatively quickly. Going in, I already had an idea in mind. I wanted some kind of flower (to represent bloom) to be meshed with a flame (to represent fire). I sketched away. After about an hour or so, I had drawn the final version of what I now consider to be the official logo of my new brand, Firebloom.
Feast your eyes, ladies and gents.
Today was a good day. I also managed to read 150 pages in the current french novel I’m reading. It’s called, “La Poursuite de l’Idéale”.
Excited to show you more of what I have in the works for Firebloom.
Stay tuned.
If you’re enjoying the series, drop some claps. If you have some tips and tricks, write them in the comments. I appreciate you.
Creating an apparel brand series
Previous ‘episodes’:
