Branding Metric Loop
Do you know how hard it is to make a decision for yourself when you don’t know who you are? How do you know which direction to take when you are out of touch with yourself? Your identity comes from the very essence of who you are and informs every decision you make.
Here at Metric Loop, we want to be your technology advocate. We want to help you navigate the overwhelming waters of IT infrastructure by taking the guesswork out of the technology you use to run your business. After all, you probably founded your company because you had a great idea, not because you had self-hosted unified communications from Cisco.
What’s In a Name?
So, how do we communicate this as a company? The first thing we did was come up with a unique name that conveys who we are and what we do. There were a couple things we wanted to convey with our name:
- We wanted to be a company that was driven by data, metrics, and analytics.
- We wanted to be a transparent company that eschewed the rampant culture of “office politics” and relied on data instead of emotions.
The second point is arguably more subjective but it boiled down to this: we want to be a company that keeps everyone informed (or, in the loop) and encourages our customers to do the same. “Data Loop” was a frontrunner until we landed on “Metric Loop” because of its uniqueness.
The First Try
Lovingly dubbed the “stand up Audi”, this was our first attempt at a logo. We contracted out for this simple design work which really summed up how we felt about it. There was no thought behind it, or if there was we weren’t included in it. It was strictly a business transaction which made it feel all the more like an ill-fitting coat.
Even if it lacked chutzpah, we had a logo! We wanted to start using it to get our name out there. Problem is, this first logo didn’t convert nicely to a square. We ended up making a quick square by taking the “M” and two rings and mashing them together.
We started using this everywhere- internally with Slack and externally with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and across our first website.
The Second Try, With Help
The next time we revisited our logo was when we crafted our brand identity. Creating a brand identity is a very introspective process and we needed to unpack our collective feelings and vision for how we wanted to represent ourselves to the world. After an intense brainstorming session, we defined our brand values as simple, elegant, and intuitive. Our new values perfectly captured how we wanted our customers to feel when they interacted with our products and services.
We were now able to take a fresh look at our logo. Keeping our brand values in mind, we knew our logo had to convey a lot of meaning quickly but still be easily recognized and understood. Our first step was to change up our typography. The old logo used a generic font that while simple, didn’t have a lot of character behind it. After reviewing over 30 fonts, it came down to Josefin Sans and Catamaran. While we liked both of them because of their clean and modern look, we ultimately chose Catamaran because its rounded corners looked friendlier and more approachable than Josefin Sans’ sharp edges.
With our font picked out, we could now begin to develop a brandmark. We wanted the brandmark to be a play on Metric Loop, so we investigated a variety of shapes and patterns that embodied metrics and circles. Our experiments yielded two winning candidates — both of them a combination of a pound sign and a circle. The first focused more on the circle, with a subtle nod to the pound sign while the other was just the opposite. After comparing them both, we all agreed that the brandmark featuring the pound sign was a better choice because at the end of the day we’re Metric Loop, not Loop Metric. Putting together our brandmark and typography, we had the foundation for our logo.
Now we just needed a slogan to seal the deal. Little did we know that this would be the hardest part of the process. Gathering together one morning, we set out to find the perfect three word phrase that encapsulated our identity. It took us the whole day and lots of coffee to come up with our slogan. Some of our favorites included, Technology for Business, Your Technology Amigo, Translating Technology to Growth, and Anything But Slogans! But in the end, we found our perfect match: Your Technology Advocate. Our slogan conveys that we’re ready to fight on your behalf to ensure that you are getting the best deals, services and information to grow your business with technology.
Finally, we were ready to put all of the pieces together and show off our new logo to the world. By putting in the effort to understand ourselves and what we wanted Metric Loop to become, we created a logo that truly embodies our identity in a way our old logo never could.
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Originally published at www.metricloop.com on February 27, 2016.
