4 ms·

How Bvckup got its name

24 points by kmfrk 16y ago

latitude 16y ago
I 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 :)
eps 16y ago
This 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 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.
- latitude 16y ago
  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:)
pgbovine 16y ago
at 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?
- latitude 16y ago
  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.
  - winton 16y ago
    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.
  - kooshball 16y ago
    > 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.
    - latitude 16y ago
      Examples don't mean to help, they were meant to illustrate the point that followed. The ease of pronunciation and the ability to spell the name from its audible form are not all that important in the online context. This is a conjecture, not a fact, but based on what I've seen so far it appears to be a valid one. Moreover that stumble that your brain does when seeing it for the first time, it makes the name memorable. Compare to something like "Super Backup" - fine, easy flowing name, all clear. A week passes, and what do you remember? Was it a "super" or an "ultra backup"? Now imagine it was called "Duper Backup" - the same thing as with Bvckup, this quirk makes it more memorable and in the end that's what counts. I have to put a disclaimer here though :) I have rather unconventional views of what makes or breaks the logos and names. I got flamed more than once for these views on Logopond and Typophile, but I still firmly believe that a small quirk in the name goes a long way. See, for example, http://dribbble.com/shots/92904-Puzzle http://dribbble.com/shots/92904-Puzzle
      - zepolen 16y ago
        The name is alright, although personally I pronounce it bvvvkup in my head rather than bee-vee-ckup, but the point is that it's memorable. Explaining it over the phone to someone might be harder. The logo is a miss though imho, I honestly thought it was an upside A as well. You could probably rectify it without losing the original concept though, for example: http://i.imgur.com/u0z2X.jpg http://i.imgur.com/u0z2X.jpg
jorkos 16y ago
This 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.
- latitude 16y ago
  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?
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio. Or rather, every user who doesn't because the producer can't work out how to pronounce it, so it never goes on the teleprompter.
    - latitude 16y ago
      > Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio That's not "practically speaking". If I ever to get a TV coverage, that'd be of TWiT or similar, and I'm sure Leo can manage to pronounce it and follow-up with the URL on the screen.
baddox 16y ago
That entire website is a <table> tag, and I'm OK with that.
- huhtenberg 16y ago
  And so is HN. Are you OK with that too?
trustfundbaby 16y ago
I wondering how long the process took. And kudos on your site design ... it made me go look at the actual site ... and download the software and now I'm backing up my entire hard drive using bvckup:) That product name is funny though, I wouldn't know how to direct someone to it verbally other than to say "I'll fb you the link"
latitude 16y ago
800 uniques so far, about 50 downloads. I'll post updated counts in a bit for everyone's amusement.
- latitude 16y ago
  1475 uniques from HN in 8 hours, about 80 downloads. Receeding now.
oo 16y ago
This is off-topic, but have you considered adding a link to the actual Web site at the top of this blog? People who want to check out your product may not have the time to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link. Back to the topic: Typing "bvckup.com" in the URL is troublesome, too, especially because the name itself is very counter-intuitive and difficult to type. I have to type "b", "v" and "c" with my left index finger. It's very easy to hit the wrong key, not to mention "bvc" is not in my fingers' muscle-memory for typing normal English words. Weird names like "xkcd" are weird but still easy to type. "bvckup" is just weird.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

24 points by kmfrk 16y ago

I 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 :)

eps 16y ago

This 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 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.

latitude 16y ago
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:)

pgbovine 16y ago

at 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?

latitude 16y ago
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.
- winton 16y ago
  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.
- kooshball 16y ago
  > 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.
  - latitude 16y ago
    Examples don't mean to help, they were meant to illustrate the point that followed. The ease of pronunciation and the ability to spell the name from its audible form are not all that important in the online context. This is a conjecture, not a fact, but based on what I've seen so far it appears to be a valid one. Moreover that stumble that your brain does when seeing it for the first time, it makes the name memorable. Compare to something like "Super Backup" - fine, easy flowing name, all clear. A week passes, and what do you remember? Was it a "super" or an "ultra backup"? Now imagine it was called "Duper Backup" - the same thing as with Bvckup, this quirk makes it more memorable and in the end that's what counts. I have to put a disclaimer here though :) I have rather unconventional views of what makes or breaks the logos and names. I got flamed more than once for these views on Logopond and Typophile, but I still firmly believe that a small quirk in the name goes a long way. See, for example, http://dribbble.com/shots/92904-Puzzle http://dribbble.com/shots/92904-Puzzle
    - zepolen 16y ago
      The name is alright, although personally I pronounce it bvvvkup in my head rather than bee-vee-ckup, but the point is that it's memorable. Explaining it over the phone to someone might be harder. The logo is a miss though imho, I honestly thought it was an upside A as well. You could probably rectify it without losing the original concept though, for example: http://i.imgur.com/u0z2X.jpg http://i.imgur.com/u0z2X.jpg

jorkos 16y ago

This 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.

latitude 16y ago
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?
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio. Or rather, every user who doesn't because the producer can't work out how to pronounce it, so it never goes on the teleprompter.
  - latitude 16y ago
    > Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio That's not "practically speaking". If I ever to get a TV coverage, that'd be of TWiT or similar, and I'm sure Leo can manage to pronounce it and follow-up with the URL on the screen.

baddox 16y ago

That entire website is a <table> tag, and I'm OK with that.

huhtenberg 16y ago
And so is HN. Are you OK with that too?

trustfundbaby 16y ago

I wondering how long the process took. And kudos on your site design ... it made me go look at the actual site ... and download the software and now I'm backing up my entire hard drive using bvckup:) That product name is funny though, I wouldn't know how to direct someone to it verbally other than to say "I'll fb you the link"

latitude 16y ago

800 uniques so far, about 50 downloads. I'll post updated counts in a bit for everyone's amusement.

latitude 16y ago
1475 uniques from HN in 8 hours, about 80 downloads. Receeding now.

oo 16y ago

This is off-topic, but have you considered adding a link to the actual Web site at the top of this blog? People who want to check out your product may not have the time to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link. Back to the topic: Typing "bvckup.com" in the URL is troublesome, too, especially because the name itself is very counter-intuitive and difficult to type. I have to type "b", "v" and "c" with my left index finger. It's very easy to hit the wrong key, not to mention "bvc" is not in my fingers' muscle-memory for typing normal English words. Weird names like "xkcd" are weird but still easy to type. "bvckup" is just weird.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]