by Jeff Bowman

Over the past two weeks I have been trying to get my arms around our brand strategy and trademarks. Several aspects of our current approach concern me. First of these is the name and word treatment of the company name: Exbiblio. What the name implies is “formerly a library of books,” or “out of the book.” This is clever enough. Exbiblio, however, is a tongue twisting four syllables so it only works as a company name; not as a product or services brand name to be featured in our communications with consumers. More troubling are the font, color palette and logo as outlined in our style guide. THEY ALL SCREAM GOTHIC . In fact, our font choice is even called Gothic. Our tagline (The Paper Renaissance) doesn’t make any connection with the digital world. Amusingly, it is even more of a disconnect when you consider that the Renaissance included the decline of Gothic architecture.

If there is one thing that we are not, it’s Gothic. We are trying to change the print world by bringing it seamlessly into the digital world. This is cutting edge and very modern.

From the form factor of our devices, to our fonts and logos, to the colors we choose on our web page, our visual brand language should consistently convey what we are about. As such, a small group of us have gone through an exercise to more clearly define this entity we call Exbiblio. Following is where we have evolved to date:

Exbiblio^® Brand
Positioning – what we offer to each specific customer:
For people connected to both the printed and digital worlds, Exbiblio invents and provides portable solutions that bridge these media while managing private information securely, bringing rich web functionality to the paper products they interact with every day.

Brand Promise – What we stand for in the hearts and minds of our customers:
A conscientious, stakeholder-focused company that provides mobile connectivity between the print and digital worlds.

Key word:
Connectivity

This is a work in progress and none of this language is necessarily what we will use outside the company. It provides an internal screen by which we can evaluate the consistency and fit of our actions and our external communications. As you can see, our brand promise also addresses Exbiblio as a .com/.org entity.

The next steps are to look for fonts, colors, a tagline and logo that speak directly to mobile connectivity between the print and digital worlds. That appears to be the case with respect to the form factor of our first device that has a very sleek, modern and functional design.