A new name

The most common reason why companies change their names is:

1. A new fresh name and new corporate identity can give something refreshing to a perhaps stable and/or boring product
2. Because you want to make it clear that the company is going in a different direction and then reflect that in the name
3. Because the company has been taken over, or has taken over another company itself
4. Because the company has shaddy businesses and wants to cover it up skillfully
5. Because the old name is simply no longer representative.

In my case it is the latter. I still think Raketwetenschap is a nice name that suits the site and me well, but it has a major disadvantage. It is Dutch. It is a word that is truly impossible to pronounce for any non-Dutch person. [mfn]For those wondering, the Dutch word Raketwetenschap is an Anglicism, a lazy borrowing of the word Rocket Science. In Holland we actually translate the statement “It’s not Rocket Science” as “Het is geen hogere wiskunde.”[/mfn]

And you can’t remember what you can’t pronounce. Like I have with Bartoz Ciechanowski’s blog. (For unknown reasons I keep forgetting to bookmark this blog and when I want to read a new article I always have to dig deep and google with the only indication that it is something Polish.

Brainstorming about a new name

It had to be something cool

When brainstorming for a new name I had 2 requirements:

1. It must be something with rockets again
2. It has to be something memorable

The most obvious, of course, was to literally translate rocket science. But everything with rocket science I could think of was either occupied or unaffordable. Besides, I wanted something different. You can especially have fun playing with today’s domain names. And after some clicking around I suddenly saw the domain name .cool. I didn’t have to think about it for long, because what’s cooler than .cool? [mfn] By the way, you can find the website at both rockets.cool and rocketsare.cool[/mfn]

A new logo

More playfull

In addition to the new name, I also wanted a new logo. Because somehow it would no longer be correct if I were to transfer it literally. Now, designing a logo is quite difficult, I can tell you, because it has to be representative of everything and also stand the test of time.

The icon has remained almost the same, except that it now shows a single R instead of RW.

The textual logo now has a byline. That was something I wanted for a while, to make sure what it’s about.

So much for the update to a new name. I’d love to hear what everyone thinks. Let me know in the comments below.