Loud Dog worked closely with Midokura’s San Francisco team to learn about network virtualization and the their company, redesign the website, add multi-language support, and develop new marketing messaging.

The cloud infographic on the homepage quickly demonstrates Midokura’s value — by virtualizing your network, you can expand your business potential. Taking a cue from the Midokura logo, the blue and green color palette is friendly and modern. The rest of the site, from icons to menu items, remains clean and simple.

The language issues were a bit more complex. Loud Dog used a combination of strategies to bring the site to an international crowd.  The WordPress theme was localized, translated into Japanese, and then installed on a multisite installation of WordPress, where separate English and Japanese sites are managed.  Using a multisite language switching plugin, pages were paired across the two sites to provide the visitor with a seamless translation experience.

“Loud Dog really took the time to get to know us as a company and learn about our technology,” said Adam Johnson, Midokura’s General Manager. “We’ve come away from the project with some great management tools and site that truly reflects our organization.”

Congratulations to our friends at Midokura on the launch of their new website. Be sure to check out Midokura’s new site — while you’re there, you just might  learn something new about the cloud!

The naming process can be a lot to bite off at one time, so we’re hoping this series of articles will provide different frameworks and lenses to evaluate names. The previous article in this series discussed how names work within brand architecture and how the relationship of a company to its products impacts the naming conversation. In this article, we focus on how a name can reinforce and support company and product positioning and answer the critical question: what can a name accomplish for your company?

Different types of words

Before jumping into different names and how they accomplish different things, it’s helpful to understand the landscape and have some context.

There are a few basic categories that can be helpful when discussing names (and we’ll look back at these):

• real words
• composite words or portmanteaus (Accenture, made from “accent on the future”)
• alpha-numeric words (model numbers, for example)
• non-english words (Tora Trading)
• words with Roman/Greek roots (Agilent, Aquent)
• words that use onomatopoeia to suggest meaning (Snapple)
• poetic names that imply other words (Roomba, dancing around a room)

In addition to being useful descriptors, these different styles can influence the feeling one gets from a name, and the name can help reflect the company’s culture. For example, a financial services company would be more likely to focus on a “serious” name with Greek or Roman roots, than a poetic or onomatopoeic name.

Different purposes for names

A critical part of understanding different types of names is understanding their purpose — what information they communicate to your market, and how they communicate it. At the heart of this is your company’s positioning. A name can offer a range of support for a company’s positioning, but with greater support comes greater risk.

Functional or descriptive names are the most obvious and least risky. These names may be an individual’s name (usually the founder or partners), be descriptive of what the company or product does, or be a pre- or suffixed reference to the product’s function. Descriptive names are less memorable than other names and don’t directly contribute to brand equity, though they are able to carry brand equity when they are supported with plenty of marketing.

Functional names are best used  for products when a company wants to build direct brand equity to the parent brand, for example:

• BMW 325
• Oracle Database 11g

Descriptive names for companies include:

• American Airlines
• General Motors
• McKinsey & Company

Experiential or metaphoric names try to capture the experience of using the product or working with the company. They’re great because they immediately make sense, are more memorable than descriptive names, and are effective for early entrants into new markets. They can present problems, however, because they’re harder to trademark and tend to be common, even within industries.

Some examples include:

• United Airlines
• Explorer (Internet Explorer or Ford Explorer)
• Safari
• Crystal Reports

Coined names are made-up or foreign words (see our list above). These names can overlap with the other types, but are distinctive in how much marketing effort is needed to imbue them with meaning. Snapple, for example, is a made up name, but alludes to the experience of drinking it (experiential). Names with Greek or Roman roots often command a sense of gravitas. Coined names are easily trademarked, can sound serious (Greek/Latin based), and can be emotionally engaging (poetic, onomatopoeidic). Because they don’t have natural meaning, however, they can require a high degree of marketing effort to imbue with meaning (I still have no idea what Aquent means).

Examples of coined names include:

• Quantas
• Aquent
• Agilent
• Snapple
• Oreo
• Xyratex

Evocative names evoke the positioning of the product or company, rather than the goods or services themselves. They are removed from the direct experience, but still relevant. When these names work, they are awesome — they’re multidimensional and evocative. But they can be troublesome when they’re out of sync with positioning, or if positioning isn’t very clearly defined. It can be hard to get corporate approval for coined names because they’re seen as risky and different.

Not surprisingly, some of today’s most well-known companies use evocative names:

• Virgin
• Apple
• Caterpillar
• Amazon

Understanding the different types of names helps maximize the efficiency of the brainstorming process, which we’ll discuss in our next post.

LiveReload

I’ve recently discovered the power of LiveReload. It’s a program that silently runs on your computer, and waits for you to make changes to your code. When you do, it reloads your browser. Then you can look over and see your changes, nearly instantly. It’s a little thing, but super handy. Not having to cmd+tab, cmd+r all the time has shaved microseconds off my development time. That may sound like a sarcastic review, but actually, I really like it. For reals.

But, it does more than that. You can configure it to run certain actions when you save your files. So, for instance, you could set up a script to push files out over FTP, or flip text upside down. Also, out of the box, it will help you with the big thing I mentioned. It will compile SASS.

SASS

SASS is an improved specification for CSS. A SASS file is similar to a normal CSS file, in that you specify how your site looks through the use of selectors and properties, but SASS gives you more tools for your belt. For instance, you can nest rules.

.giraffe {
   .neck {
      length: "super long";
   }

   .skin {
      spots: "sure, why not";
   }
}

This keeps you from having giraffes everywhere. And, trust me, that is a problem.

You can also define variables.

$delicious: "ranch dressing";

.salad {
   topping: $delicious;
}

.pizza {
   topping: $delicious;
}

.just-drink-it-straight {
   beverage: $delicious;
}

SASS has other great stuff, like mixins and inheritance. You can even use equations in your rules. Make H2′s half as big as H1′s, or make links twice as purply as your background color. Check it out at sass-lang.com.

SASS Reload

One thing about SASS, that used to keep me away, is that you can’t just use it straight on your website. You have to run it through a compiler that turns it into normal CSS. While that isn’t such an issue for me, with many projects that I work on, I’m collaborating with less nerdy people. So, I don’t want to have to start teaching people how to do it.

Solved: LiveReload does it for you. Tell LiveReload what directory to watch, and that there be SASS in there, and it will recompile the file every time you save. You can even tell it to minimize the CSS while it’s at it.

So, I’m a convert. I’m writing super clean SASS, partitioned into multiple files, which are compiled into a single, production ready, minified CSS file. Thanks, SASS.

Loud Dog worked with Cloudera, the host of HBaseCon, to design the event identity and event microsite, using our own WordPress plugin.

For the event identity, we took inspiration from the existing Apache HBase logo and infused it with subtle San Francisco flair by using the color International Orange (Engineering).  Not to be confused with International Orange (Aerospace), the dark orange is the same color used to paint the Golden Gate Bridge.

To appeal to the conference’s developer audience, the site has a light gray grid background, scattered with metaphorical “bits of data” in the header. “The inspiration for the site came from HBase itself, as it focuses on the hosting of Bigtables with column-oriented storage,” says art director Jodi Wing.

HBaseCon 2012 will take place on Tuesday, May 22, 2012  in San Francisco. For more information, visit hbasecon.com.

KidsPark provides hourly childcare for preschool and school age children in a safe and fun play space without any reservations. With locations throughout the Bay Area and in other states, this app will be useful for families on the go looking for creative, convenient childcare solutions.

The app allows users to find their nearest KidsPark location, look up hours and rates, and provides contact information for each center.

“We’re excited to connect with our customers in a new way. Hopefully this is just the beginning and we’ll be able to provide even more information in the future,” said KidsPark founder Debbie Milner.

Loud Dog has worked with KidsPark on everything from their branding to web development to social media. We hope to add more features to the app in the future, such as weekly snack and lunch menus, monthly discount codes, and activity schedules.

Click here to learn more about KidsPark and its unique approach to childcare.

At the most basic level, coming up with a name is easy: just write down a bunch of ideas, and pick the one that you like best. Of course, this is easier said than done. You can maximize the number and quality of your options and be smart about picking the best one by defining a strategy, following a process, and using different techniques.

Before diving into naming, it’s vital to step back and understand and define the relationship between the company and its products: the structure of the brand. When it comes to brand, is the company dominant, are its products dominant, or is it somewhere in between?

Company-centric structures build brand equity in the company itself.

In many brand structures, the company holds the brand equity and its different products simply extend it. In this company-centric strategy, product names are often alphanumeric or rely heavily on the company name.

This structure is best for companies selling large ticket items with long sales cycles, where knowing the company behind the product is a priority for purchasers. Many auto manufacturers follow this strategy, as do airline manufacturers, B2B software companies, and even some consumer companies.

Examples of companies that follow a company-centric naming strategies include Mercedes, BMW, Boeing, Oracle, SAP, Coke, and Neutrogena.

Product-centric structures distribute brand equity to individual products.

At the other end of the spectrum, a product-centric strategy puts little brand equity in the company itself, and instead creates strong brands for individual products.With this approach, the company’s name is less important to purchasers, but individual product names and logos matter a great deal.

This strategy is often used by companies selling smaller, stand-alone products in which the purchaser is more interested in the product itself and its features, not necessarily on the company behind it.

Proctor & Gamble, for example, sells Dawn and Swiffer, and Unilever produces Lipton and Slimfast — many consumers are not familiar with either company, but their products are well known. Indeed, P&G and Uniliver list their various products under “brands” — the products are the brand, not the company. Many pharmaceutical companies create product-centric structures, heavily marketing individual medications while the company remains in the background — Pfizer and Viagra or Lipitor, Sanofi and Ambien or Allegra.

While this structure distributes most brand equity to individual products, the company needs to remember to retain some for investor and analyst relations.

Hybrid brand structures split brand equity between the company and its individual products.

In between these two extremes are companies that use a hybrid structure. Most companies fall into this category, with products that share the spotlight with the company. Apple and Nike are prime examples of this — while they are well known, iPhones and Air Jordans are as likely to be buzzworthy as the companies that make them.

In some cases, the hybrid structure is as a result of a natural evolution or shift within the company. A new product may need to be called out. Microsoft began with a very company-centered brand structure, but shifted brand equity to its products when it needed to distinguish Windows from DOS.

A change in market or an acquisition may also contribute to a shift. When Adobe began marketing Photoshop to a broader audience, it let the company brand take a backseat to the product name — to such an extent that “photoshop” is popularly used as a verb.

Very few companies pursue an exclusive strategy: nearly all exist somewhere on a spectrum, with attention gradually shifting away from the company itself to its products:

Different brand structures are appropriate for different companies and strategies. A solid understanding of which is right for your company will help ground your naming project (and branding project) and give it direction.

In our next article on naming, we’ll discuss different types of names and how they communicate with your audience.

Working closely with MarkLogic’s internal team, Loud Dog was proud to deliver the website’s design, client-side code, and contribute to MarkLogic’s brand strategy.

Loud Dog has worked with MarkLogic since 2006(!). A pioneer in the world of big data, MarkLogic helps organizations of all sizes manage and control their data, and we’re excited to continue our relationship with them.

We had to figure out how we would print the card with a small budget and a short turnaround. Luckily, I happened to own to a unique Japanese invention for screen printing our cards. Perhaps you’ve heard of it before, Print Gocco.

Developed in 1977 by Noboru Hayama, the Gocco machine is a small, portable screen printer that allows individuals to print up to 80 editions of a design without having to use a screen for each color or struggle with registration. The setup process is similar to that of a standard photo-silkscreen process — the Gocco screen is coated in a light-sensitive emulsifier and reacts with a carbon-based image such as a photocopy when exposed to light. After the screen is exposed to light, the design is “burned” into the screen, creating the area where ink flows through onto the paper. The beauty of the Gocco machine is that the setup is self contained — the prints and the screen are created with the same machine. Expose a fresh screen in the Gocco, and then ink your screen and set it up to print multiples. It is very clean and easy to use. The only drawback is that you are limited to about a 5×7 inch print area*.

Being the hoarder that I am, I just happened to purchase a Gocco about eight years ago after taking a “Loco for Gocco” class at a local paper store. In that eight years, I’ve used it twice and happened to have almost all of the original inks as well as extra supplies. When I heard that Riso, the company manufacturing these amazing printers, was going to discontinue Gocco in 2005, I of course in typical hoarding fashion, made some online purchases to make sure I’d have plenty of supplies for a future date.

Well, that future date finally arrived! In December we decided to break out my old Gocco and try printing these cards in house at Loud Dog. And by we, I mostly mean Emily. I think the office really enjoyed learning about this new process and it got all of us feeling the holiday spirit a bit more to see all of our “chards” lined up and drying along every surface in the office. Brian even took some warm and fuzzy video of the process-in-action to share the holiday nostalgia.

Loud Dog was at An Event Apart last week! If you saw some of my tweets, I was definitely going to 11. An Event Apart features some of the greatest minds in modern web design. I attended the all-day workshop portion of the event, and the presenter, Luke Wroblewski, flooded my noggin with mobile web design gold. Mobile design is still young and growing fast. I want to share with you some of the concepts so that you may incorporate them into your design practice and stay fresh.

Design for simplicity

The key to designing for the mobile platform is to keep the interactions fast, easy-to-navigate, and responsive. If any clicks cause a disrupted user experience, the user can be left with a tainted impression. We have to design for zero frustration. We can improve the user experience in various ways:

• Reducing the number of clicks it takes to reach desired information
• Decreasing the time it takes to load each page in our mobile apps
• Reducing the clutter in mobile apps (tiny screens) which include navigations, ads, secondary content items, etc.

There’s an infinite number of more improvements, but most of them require you to eliminate the clutter and simplify the design.

Design with mobile in mind from the start

Desktop web design is much different from the mobile web platform. Instead of making two separate sets of content, why not use the mobile experience for the desktop experience? We are already streamlining the content and information architecture for an awesome user experience. Why not apply that awesome-ness to the full-sized desktop version too? It’s much more difficult to shoehorn a large corporate site into a mobile website than it is to scale the mobile experience up. There’s usually so much content on a desktop site’s homepage that it would overwhelm the tiny mobile version. We can have an optimized desktop experience by starting with the already-optimized mobile experience.

We need to keep our minds open to new technology

More and more people are picking up mobile devices that are connected to the internet; usage is growing exponentially. It’s growing so fast that companies are afraid of falling behind. The mobile device medium is still fairly young, but it’s already evolving. We already transitioned from buttons/joystick interface (Blackberry) to a touch screen interface (iPhone), and now we’re moving toward an non-physical interface like iPhone’s Siri. We’re going to have to start designing application APIs to work with Siri next and not just the touch interface. Technology is growing and evolving quickly. We need to stay flexible and adaptable if we want to effectively reach our customers.

Last thoughts

We can learn a lot from how mobile applications are designed. We can use principles like simplifying, streamlining, and staying adaptable, and apply them to all parts of our businesses, like to web design, industrial design, content strategy, and even our branding platforms. Simplify and optimize.