How Bvckup got its name
bvckup.tumblr.com
How Bvckup got its name
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#2I was going to submit this myself, but you beat me to it.
In any case, while mostly in a reading mode, I am on HN. If anyone has any questions or comments, shoot, be happy to talk about my stuff :)
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#3This method of creating the name is widely used by professional logo/identity designers. David Airey has a good illustration - http://www.davidairey.com/berthier-logo-design-process
The main problem with it that it is still unpredictable. It may lead to a good name or it may not.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#4at the risk of sounding ignorant, how the heck are people supposed to pronounce your product name? in fact, how do you even talk about your product verbally with others?
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#5at the risk of sounding ignorant, how the heck are people supposed to pronounce your product name? in fact, how do you even talk about your product verbally with others?
Bee-vee-cup, but here's the thing - in two years of it being in beta this has never come up as a real issue. I guess this can impede a word of (physical) mouth to a degree, but the assumption here is that few people are going to need to actually pronouce the name.
Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as its predominant usage is online.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#6This post seems to miss three important considerations: trademarks, domains & "spellability". With respect to trademarks, it's worth taking a few minutes on uspto.gov to understand the trademark landscape of your potential name. Secondly, with respect to domains, it's worth assessing how much your desired name will cost you. It is very rare to find a half-way decent name that has not been registered, but many are either not being used or in the hands of squatters. For a few thousand you can get a decent name. When your desired name is in the hands of squatters, and you don't have the cash, I suggest using something like "getDESIREDNAME" or "DESIREDNAMEapp".....if the service succeeds you will have the cash to purchase the domain. Again, you want to ensure going in that your desired name is not already being used in the same manner that you intend to use it. On the final point, if someone can't spell your name after hearing it, it's a fail. Flickr is not the exception that disproves this rule.
Looking at Bvckup then w/ these considerations in mind, yes the trademark is available and so was the domain, but on the third count it fails. My 2 cents.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#7at the risk of sounding ignorant, how the heck are people supposed to pronounce your product name? in fact, how do you even talk about your product verbally with others?
Bee-vee-cup , but here's the thing - in two years of it being in beta this has never come up as a real issue. I guess this can impede a word of (physical) mouth to a degree, but the assumption here is that few people are going to need to actually pronouce the name. Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as its…
My first impulse is to say "backup but replace the a with a v". If you tell someone bee-vee-cup they still don't know how to spell the domain name.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#8This method of creating the name is widely used by professional logo/identity designers. David Airey has a good illustration - http://www.davidairey.com/berthier-logo-design-process The main problem with it that it is still unpredictable. It may lead to a good name or it may not.
Certainly, it's a well-known method. My main goal was to illustrate the actual flow from a set of words through associations to the name.
As for its unpredictability - at least it provides certain framework that generally speeds up the convergence, as opposed to just sitting there and brute-forcing the vocabulary:)
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#9at the risk of sounding ignorant, how the heck are people supposed to pronounce your product name? in fact, how do you even talk about your product verbally with others?
Bee-vee-cup , but here's the thing - in two years of it being in beta this has never come up as a real issue. I guess this can impede a word of (physical) mouth to a degree, but the assumption here is that few people are going to need to actually pronouce the name. Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as its…
> Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as its predominant usage is online.
I'm not sure how your examples there help you at all. Each of them have clear pronunciation: dribble, forest, XKCD each letter spelled out.
bee-vee-cup is not intuitive at all. If you show the logo to me I would have guessed "Backup" with an inverted capital A.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#10This post seems to miss three important considerations: trademarks, domains & "spellability". With respect to trademarks, it's worth taking a few minutes on uspto.gov to understand the trademark landscape of your potential name. Secondly, with respect to domains, it's worth assessing how much your desired name will cost you. It is very rare to find a half-way decent name that has not been registered, but many are eit…
First two points - fully agreed. I should've mentioned the domain name availability, it is indeed the first coarse filter for rejecting name candidates.
> if someone can't spell your name after hearing it, it's a fail.
Practically speaking - why is it a fail? Who are the prospective users that I am going to loose over this?