Jai's Laboratory

Guest Column by Bashar Alaeddin

So I’m 29 years old and I’m about to start my life. After graduating from three schools, gained three years of work experience; I’ve decided to open my own business. And oh my God is it ridiculous-ly insane. Putting all the logistics aside and un-necessary details, what I’m here to talk about is the process of coming up with a name and logo for your own start-up. To put things in context for you, my main line of work is photography (all kinds, studio, portraits, behind-the-scenes, fashion, location, interior, products, you name it). My second line of work is motion-graphics, so naturally my business is a digital studio comprised of Photography & Motion. It’s creative; it’s digital, its fresh, new and all other classic keywords used by any client.

Now the thing is, since one of my degrees is a Digital Design diploma from Vancouver Film School, naturally I should design my own brand right? Well… it’s harder than you may think, at least in my experience. The cliché’ line of “You are your own worst client” is as true as drunk dialing. I’ve been researching name’s, logo’s, inspiration for the last two months and I can’t seem to stick with one. It’s become so hard to make a decision because I believe I’ve become so inspired and obsessed with the top brands and those awesome negative space elements that I can’t focus on what my target audience would connect with. From names such as “Exposure” to “Chroma” and from “ShootMe” to “LightInk”, I slowly began to realize that I should have paid more attention in Branding class. But seriously, I think all those books out there only maybe try to guide you in the right direction though it’s only long-term personal experience that can get you what you’re looking for. I made a list of the top 20 or so amazing logos of various industries and I’ve found out that the people who designed 90% of those are over 50yrs old.

So what chance did I have to achieve a similar standard with my start-up? I showed some logo options to friends, to some of my old teachers, some gave me negative feedback, some positive and of course most were contradictory. Yet here I am, with an office space, with equipment, with mostly everything to start operations but no name! It’s kind of ironic really, usually people have a name and an idea but no finances or drive to get up and do it, yet in my case, I have an office space, I have equipment and I have a few clients for when I was free-lancing but no name or logo! So I started thinking, how important is your name? Was my drive to start my own business more important than having a name? I just didn’t want to work from home anymore.  So what now? Well, I’m still working, still taking on jobs but as my personal name not as a company.  By the way, I live in the Middle-East, in Jordan. In this part of the world, you’re known by your work ethic and personality more than your company’s “brand and identity”. It’s bit disorienting sometimes to have a western education and taught the ways of process and correct design thinking and then trying to apply that in a region where clients most of the time pay for the final product and don’t care much about how long it took you to do it or what method’s were used.

So anyway, I kept researching names, phonetics of letters, the meaning of vowels in human society and I got lost in all that philosophical crap. And now I’m seriously considering paying someone who specialized in brands and identities to do it for me. I figured that to be the best way because here’s how I see it, paying someone an amount I can reasonably afford to do all the thinking for me yet at the same time being extremely helpful with my feedback [since I do have a degree in Design remember?] and criticism, I’m hoping to get a great result. That way, I can get back to my photography and motion graphics and, with anticipation, in due time I will make the evolution from a “freelancer with an office space” to “an established well respected new digital agency”. Now the question is… where do I find that person?

Bio : Bashar is a visual artist, maybe a designer [he’s not sure yet] based in Amman, Jordan. He loves color and photographs, minimal designs and dreams one day of being the editor-in-chief of National Geographic. You can check out his stuff at www.balaeddin.comfor now till he finds a name for his studio.

(all photos courtesy of Bashar’s talented lens)