Whether it’s your real name, an alter-ego or a brand name, getting the right name isn’t always easy.

Blogging

First year multimedia students were all encouraged to start-up a blog. This would continue throughout the three years of study and would be the way tutors would keep an eye on what we were doing. Content would come from our projects and assignments and it was a good way to develop ourselves as multimedia practitioners.

In the last year of my study I even did a few video blogs as I wanted to try a different medium of sharing ideas, designs and developments.

How did City&Wool come about?

We all hope in coming up with a good brand name it’s going to make us famous – an in some cases this can be true. I knew I had my content sorted but coming up with the right name was a little harder. Of course most designers use their real names but having a more generic name can make it harder for you to stand out. Believe it or not there are other Dan Rylands out there so coming up with a unique brand name and using it made it easier for me to get up the search rankings. For me it all started with wanting to come up with a brand name that was witty and cool.

A blog can be your digital playground

Designers play with ideas like cats (or kittens) play with wool so I initially came to using the title kitty and wool, or kitty&wool. This was my blog title for sometime although I wanted a brand name that was more professional and took seriously.

Given I was studying in Nottingham, a great city, the name changed to City&Wool. This had the more professional image I was looking for and the word ‘wool’ associated well with the idea of string theory – the connecting of strings – or in my case ideas, designs and concepts. I also wanted this to express importance of networking and building good relationships whether it’s with other designers or clients.

Now how about you

If you’re really looking to make a name for yourself it’s about starting conversations. The more content you create for people to talk about helps. This can be a mix of blog posts, video blogging, tweeting or even dribbbling. Deciding whether or not you do this under your real name or coming up with a brand name is up to you and in many ways it doesn’t matter. As Scott Ginsberg puts it – ‘If you want to make a name for yourself, start becoming the living brochure of your own awesomeness.’ I suppose for me doing this as Dan Ryland or as City&Wool, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the work that I produce because good design gets recognition.