Oh the pitfalls of domain names. It is a tricky business, thinking up a clever name, getting all excited about it, then plugging it into Go Daddy and BLAM! It's not available. It happened over and over again with fabulous names like:
Red Truck Round-Up
Milwaukee Pickers
Turnkey Charm
Bricolage Collage
Brave with a Little 'b'
The Commoner and Her Things
Sweaty Betty's Man Things
Mit Kit
My Sister the Shopper
Those Wanton Ways
Frogtown, Ltd.
Group Therapy
Vagabond, Ltd.
The Foundry
Me, My Shelf, and I
I finally settled on The Imperfectionist for my business name. Bad news: not available. Good news: not an active website either. Someone owned the name and was sitting on it. Maybe I could still buy it. However, after a "WHOIS Look-up" to find the name of the owner, a query to purchase the name went nowhere.
The designer described this mark as strong, organic, exuding precision, strength, and quality. I thought it very masculine. It could look really cool as a letterpress stamp.
I could go back to the drawing board or I could tweak the exact domain name a little bit by adding a word like 'shop' or 'collection' or 'store'. I settled on ShopTheImperfectionist.com, which was available. Thank you Danica Patrick!
Onto identity design!
This was my least favorite, although it is easy to read. The designer made this by hand and used the words welcoming, complex, and authentic to describe it.
I hired a very talented local graphic designer and provided him with photos of my collections and a description of what I envisioned for a business. Everything I told him was vague and free form. Lordy, he should have run for the hills. I have since learned how helpful it is to be prepared with a graphic design brief. More on that later.
The designer named this mark "The Series", inspired in part by the sets or collections that the shop offers. He said he started with something really old and worked his way forward in time aesthetically. I love this one because I adore fold-out brochures, maps, flip books, and the like. Because the fun never ends.
For $500, he returned to me a beautiful book full of possible marks, and each one had an explanation of his process, the characteristics relayed by the mark, and the advantages to each particular mark.
This mark reminded me of a cigar ring. It is nicely detailed and would be lovely as an engraving. But a little busy for my taste.
I loved them all. But one of them more than the others made me smile from ear to ear, and warmed my heart. That was the mark. That would be my shop's signature. Literally, a signature.
My favorite. I knew it the second I saw it. (It was like that with my husband too.) I still love it and never tire of it. It's fat and messy but still elegant and even beautiful.
Then the unthinkable happened. The inactive domain theimperfectionist.com became active. Arghh! I knew I was in trouble and would be fighting an uphill battle for SEO from the start. I had to pivot. I needed a clean domain, a dotcom that was free and clear and straightforward.
Back to the drawing board and five hundred Ben Franklins down the drain. Painful.
But the silver lining is that in the process, I learned a lot about identity marks and why you cannot design them until you truly understand your brand. They should be the last step, not the first. More on that next.