Monday, September 10, 2012

Why "Chimpped"?! And What's with That Wink?

"Is it pronounced Chimp-ped"?  "It sounds like You've been Chimpped"!  "Any relation to Chump"? 

These are just some of the questions or comments I get when introducing Chimpped.  For the record, Chimpped is pronounced as "Chimp" with the "e" in the "ped" part being a silent vowel (sounds like "chimpt").  And no, I don't know what "chump" means although some people tells me there is a bad connotation to it. 

Tony and I created Chimpped with the vision of it being a simple, smart and convenient tool for everyone.  The first representation of that description (and more) that came to our minds was a Chimpanzee -- smart, swift, fun.  And given our platform is all about "doing things" (as opposed to just view, read, listen, write, or post), we changed chimp into a verb form:  Chimpped!  This word doesn't exist in Dictionary.com so it is a made-up word.  And let's face it, with the zillion of web domains that already exist in this world, it is not a bad idea to be original.

As for the logo, that took more time than coming up with our brand name.  Tony and I both knew we wanted an original monkey or chimpanzee face but we still needed to have some direction before speaking to designers.  The variations and choices were numerous.  Try googling "chimpanzee" or "monkey" images or pictures.  Do we want just the face or half body or full body? With or without clothes?  How about cartoon style or real-live image?  And the questions go on.  At one point, I got so frustrated (not knowing what to decide on) that I took out my daugther's colored pencils and started to draw a chimp from scratch.  The only reason that idea did not go through was because my daughter said I drew a very pretty and cute bear.  (Not even Tony knows about this)



                       

 
Finally we caved in and left it to the designers.  We went to a few of them with some text descriptions of what we wanted (including the wink), and picked the one that made us smile.  The only change I added to the design that we chose was making the smile bigger, happier.

 


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