What’s in a Name

Forgive a bit of self indulgence, but the wife and I are working on finishing up a few projects like texturing and painting around the new windows, changing out light switches, and a few garden chores like cutting down the beets and radish cover crops and wrestling a 16 foot hog panel into place to become a high tower., But they didn’t really translate into a full topic I think. Regardless, I wanted to still put something out this week, so I figured I would tell the story behind the Empty Labs name since I have recently switched to a new logo.

Before I thought seriously of having a “brand”, it was just fun playing with my name and initials in various company names. Being in a band at one time and still releasing music, it has been a fun pastime to throw out phrases or words that could be a band name. This was along the same line. With my initials being MT, it was natural to play with the word “empty”. I do not remember exactly how many words were added before and after that word, but eventually one of the combinations was “empty laboratory”. With a nod to Dexter’s Laboratory (emphasis on bor!) and a lifetime experimenting via tinkering and diving into how things work, it stuck in my mind. I rationalized the name over the next few weeks and that became the brand name I embraced, though shortening it to Empty Labs.

At a family gathering, I mentioned the name to my brother and he came up with the first logo. It emphasized my initials in simple text, which I really liked. It still adorns my workbench and studio monitors. So big shout out to him for that concept!

The Original

It has now been several years and as my content has leaned more towards documenting what I am learning in various topics, I felt it time to have more emphasis on the experimenting aspect of what I was doing rather than just my name. So the last, well year really, I have been trying to figure out a way to de-emphasize my initials and introduce a beaker(or at least some type of “lab” element) into the logo and failing. I have been toying with the lab rat motif too as I feel many times like I am a lab rat. I am still not sure if that is something I will embrace, but I could see something along the lines of “hey fellow lab rats!” We shall see. But like a laboratory, a willingness to try new things and lifelong learning should be key. So that process is definitely a part of what I want to show and embody myself. These were a couple of my attempts and you can see why I was looking for something else.

Attempt at de-emphasizing the MT

Than an attempt with a beaker

I heard the hosts on the Making It podcast discuss Fiverr (among other design sites) and so decided to give it a look. I was not sure at all about the whole picking a designer and trying to work through that, but it turns out Fiverr has a logo wizard where you put in your brand name, a tagline if you have it, and if there are any elements you think should be included. So being curious, I put in the info and one of the options that really caught my attention was the one now below and now my new logo. I really liked the motion implied on the beaker as well as the very minimalist font. Fiverr has two options to purchase from the wizard. Just a couple of versions of the logo or a fuller set of simple social media graphics as well as SVG files of the logo. It was $60 for the full version and $30 for the simple, which seems like a pretty decent deal considering the struggle I have gone through. All told I had the logo in about 30 minutes for the whole process, all but the last few minutes was browsing the various design concepts. It isn’t perfect as I tried with the name through which I am releasing music (Sonic Thought Experiment, my name is far too common) and so far I haven’t seen a design that spoke to me. If you are looking to up your logo game, I would suggest giving it a shot as the process is free. You only pay if you find something you like. You never know if you might find something like I did.

New design from Fiverr

I will leave with this. Go ahead and play with your own brand/company names. It is a fun way to daydream and hey, you might end up with one you like! That gives a little background on how I came up with my name and if you have found other ways to get cool logos, let me know in the comments and I will be sure to check it out.