Flippy is Dead, Long Live Flippy

• Posted December 16th, 2010
• By Alex (bio)
• Filed under: How We Do It

You may have noticed some slight changes around the site. If not, take a look in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. We’ve just begun introducing the new Batchbook Logo. It’s part of a larger re-branding effort for BatchBlue.

Since its beginnings in 2006, BatchBlue Software has been a one-product company, and our product and company identities have been somewhat interchangeable. For a while, we were so focused on making our product as great as we could that we didn’t worry about it. But that’s changing as we grow.

This past year, in addition to introducing some cool new integrations to Batchbook, we’ve been hard at work building some new tools. These new products will obviously have their own respective names and logos, and we’d like Batchbook to fit in with the family. If you look around, you’ll see that we’ve rolled out a new identity for Batchbook.

The mark, Flippy (as he’s affectionately known around the office) is lighter and open at a more comfortable looking angle. The pages are lighter and the progressive gradient makes them double as motion lines a little more readily. We simplified some fussy details, and finally, the geometry of our well-loved laptop actually works now.

We’ve updated the type from Zuzana Licko’s Base Nine to a slightly modified Gotham Narrow paired with Sentinel, both from Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Base Nine was created in 1995 when type designers were really embracing the freedom of digital design and experimenting with form. It’s a fun face but not where we’re headed with the aforementioned new products. Gotham Narrow and Sentinel are new faces based on old forms. They are both geometric designs and work well together which gives us some nice tools for typography both on our site and in printed material. Our marketing designer Christelle has already started using Sentinel especially in site banners and other marketing materials.

Gotham Narrow felt right from the beginning but the capper is its pedigree. Gotham was inspired by the geometric lettering on the painted signs of small businesses that used to fill our cities. Our mission here at BatchBlue is to make tools that help small business people thrive. It’s a small but nice alignment.

So that’s the story: this is the first unveiling in a larger re-branding (and plain old branding) effort. Our product logo is a bit more streamlined and modern, just like Batchbook itself. You’ll be seeing more from us in the coming months. We’re excited about where we as a company are headed, and it’s nice to be able to share this little bit of our future with you now.