Blorge takes on the world
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006BLORGE.com is a pet project I’ve been working on for the past few months. What I’m doing is setting up a family of blogs that provide entertaining and informative content under a common overarching global brand – Blorge.
Sound ambitious?? You bet.
So why the name Blorge?
Well I wanted a brand that I could call my own, and a brand that had some connection to blogging. I wanted a brand that couldn’t be claimed by anyone else, and a brand that I could register as a dot com.
If you’ve ever tried to register a dot.com you’ll know that almost every conceivable name is taken. I even tried names in Spanish, Latin, Czech, and Australian Aboringinal. All gone.
Then I started to play with joining names together. My colleague Alex-Zaharov Reutt suggested Blogasm, but I didn’t want to use a name that might have negative connotations. I wanted a name that was suggestive of blogs, but that also suggested the “reading of blogs”. I started thinking of other ways to express this idea and came up with “consumption of blogs”, which led me to “gorging on blogs”, and so you can see that Blorge is a combination of Blog and gorge.
Once I was happy with the name I asked designer Ian Tjhan to come up with a logo. I’ve worked with Ian for many years, on both online and print projects, and I really like his work.
I think Ian’s Blorge logo is clean, striking and modern.
You’ll notice that the Blorge logotype is encased in a speech bubble, which represents the expression of ideas and dialogue, which is what blogging is all about. The logo is in black and white as a tribute to the printed page (which is usually black-and-white, think books and newspapers), which was the precursor to modern electronic publishing and blogging
It’s still early days, but the first two blogs are up and running. You’ll find them at:
- TECH.BLORGE.com – PC and lifestyle technology
- PHOTO.BLORGE.com – Digital cameras and photo tutorials
In the next few posts I’ll discuss editorial strategy, differentiation and competitive advantage, as well as introduce you to some of the people who are making Blorge possible.