TheHop.xyz – 1&1 Ionos customer (Spain)
Today’s tech startups are bringing innovation to practically every industry, making it more important than ever for big companies to embrace technology in order to meet their customer’s needs. Yet, cultivating fresh ideas within a well-established company can be tricky. Today’s #WebsiteWednesday has found a unique way to solve this problem. If you read our recent article about digital strategy powerhouse JJDelgado.xyz, you may remember that he sits on the board of a collaborative entrepreneurship program founded by his employer Hijos de Rivera: TheHop.xyz.
TheHop.xyz is a new program that aims to promote innovation at 114-year-old Spanish brewery and beverage company Hijos de Rivera. TheHop.xyz gives six selected tech startups the opportunity to incorporate new tools and business models to Estrella Galicia (its popular premium beer). The selected startups get three months to develop a pilot project at their Madrid workspace, complete with training and mentoring by the company’s top executives, investors, and experts. Upon the completion of their pilot projects, the startups get the experience of implementing their ideas at a major brand. Depending on how they perform, the projects could turn into a lasting relationship.
During TheHop.xyz’s 2019 program, startups created projects meant to improve upon Estrella Galicia at various stages. Some focused on improving the beer’s production – Internet of Things startup Data Monitoring created Data Beer, an app designed to monitor the temperature, pressure, and quantity of beers in barrels. Others were focused on Estrella Galicia’s transportation and the employees that handle distribution. Social impact startup Trucksters created a relay technology that allows Estrella Galicia trucks to cover great distances without the driver moving too many kilometers away from home. Lastly, our personal favorites were focused on improving the consumption of the beer itself. Same-day delivery startup Supertech created BeerNow, a solution that allows for home delivery of cold beer in just 15 minutes.
We love to see a program like TheHop.xyz supporting the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. It’s been our mission to help new internet users establish themselves online since we launched .xyz in 2014, and programs like TheHop.xyz help to perpetuate that goal.
Head to TheHop.xyz to see how you can apply for their next program. You can also follow along on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with @somosthehop.
The importance of a logo in a company’s brand identity is well known. It’s that one symbol that carries specific information about your business that you wish to portray. It encompasses your brand persona, sector, service and often, intent or vision.
So, how do you create that logo or brand symbol that fulfills every criteria that you aim for?
There are 3 main things to consider before launching into the vital process of logo creation:
A marketing background is helpful. If you’ve explored aspects of brand or product positioning analysis of target audience, this would be valuable knowledge to have. It also matters how familiar you are with the brand and what it stands for.
If you are outsourcing your logo design to an external agency or team, your budget plays a major role in the product that you receive. Logo creation costs can vary greatly and largely depend on the number of iterations that are produced and the experience level of the designer and/or team. The output is directly related to how much you wish to spend and of course, the expertise of the designing company.
If you’re in a hurry, and likely busy with setting up other branding activities, it’s wiser to outsource your logo design. Usually once a design professional or team has your detailed creative brief, they will submit a few options within a week to ten days. Then it’s just a matter of viewing, tweaking and finalizing.
So, you have the time, inclination and ability to make your own logo.
There are a vast number of logo creation tools available online such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and Canva. Each tool has its own features and some are more complicated to use than others. Some are so simple that you may simply select, drag and drop design elements rather than creating them from scratch.
But before you begin creating your own logo using a design tool:
Though creating a logo is the cheapest option, it could involve learning new tools and taking some extra time to master certain design skills.
Once you’ve decided to hire a professional creative agency to make your logo, follow these steps to identify the right one:
The third option to create your logo by utilizing crowd-sourced design platforms. These platforms often host a community of thousands to hundreds of thousands of designers from around the world. You, the logo contest holder, would provide a design brief to the community of designers, who would then compete amongst each other to provide you with hundreds of logo options.
All you need to do is post your brief, select the options that you like, and then make any final changes. You will pay a relatively low fee when compared to a design agency or freelance designers. Two popular crowdsourcing logo design platforms include 99Designs and Design Contest.
Apart from delivering high-quality work at cost-effective prices, this technique will get you quicker results. The other advantage is the time you save in explaining your creative brief to various agencies. You will be required to post a simple, straightforward brief on the websites just once, and you will begin to get logo options almost immediately.
With the internet playing an increasing role in our lives, concepts such as crowd-sourcing design platforms are gaining popularity for the convenience that they offer. Time is limited and emerging technology may allow you to get a stellar logo in an efficient and affordable manner. So, if you have a new logo design requirement or you are thinking about refreshing an old one, a crowdsourcing platform may be able to provide your desired result.
Show off your new logo or list your design portfolio on your own website with a .xyz domain for just $1 by using promo code LOGOXYZ at checkout.
You don’t need to have a big team or significant funding behind your idea in order to bring it online and start pulling in users. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that many of our featured .xyz customers have chosen GoDaddy as their registrar. As GoDaddy Chief Brand Officer Cameron Scott explains, “All of our customers have an idea, and they all have initiative. We are there to say, ‘We’re here with you for your first step. We’re here with you for your next step. And we’ve got your back every step of the way.’”
GoDaddy themselves just debuted a new logo, designed to represent the entrepreneurial spirit of their customers. The new “GO logo” replaces the old head logo to represent GoDaddy’s focus on the entrepreneurial spirit their customers have and to serve as a beacon calling them to “go” run with their ideas and dreams. We’re big fans of the new logo and are proud to share in GoDaddy’s mission of helping entrepreneurs pursue their side hustles online.
Today’s #WebsiteWednesday is a perfect example of the solopreneurs and microbusinesses that GoDaddy is known to serve.
Overframe.xyz – GoDaddy customer (Malaysia)
Creating an app seems to be easier now than ever. With services like Appmaker.xyz, you can turn your idea into an app without any prior experience. Once you have an app ready for the market, the next step is to promote it and get live users on board. Having a great, customized video showing what your app can do may be what gets your app to stand out and pull in those all-important users. That’s where you can use this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, Overframe.xyz.
Overframe.xyz is a screen recording tool that goes above and beyond regular screen recorders. Their service uses a customizable overlay which records the video to be exactly the size of some of the most popular phone models on the market. To use Overframe.xyz, pull up your app in the software you developed it in, then start up Overframe.xyz’s service. The Overframe.xyz tool is designed to work right over top of your app development platform. That allows you to record demos of what your app looks like when in use, while keeping the correct proportions to show what it looks like on iPhone, Pixel, iPad, and even Safari.
You could use this tool to give an engaging presentation of what your app looks like at its best and give potential users a deeper vision of how they can use the app themselves. Overframe.xyz lists popular app design platforms Sketch, Principle, and Adobe XD among the services it is compatible with, making it a versatile tool that can aid designers who use multiple platforms.
The Overframe.xyz tool is just one of a handful created by developer Gaddafi Rusli. Another of his handy creations is Iconsvg.xyz, a service whose purpose is to allow developers to design and use custom icons which can give their projects a more personal touch. These custom icons can be warped, resized, and re-colored, letting the user make icons that better fit with their project’s overall feel. Once a user has created an icon with the service they can easily embed it right in their app or projects by copying the pre-made code from Iconsvg.xyz.
Gaddafi is a talented developer who thinks like a creator, which allows him to dream up and make useful tools that help other creatives like himself. By using .xyz domains for his projects, he is able to promote these tools to a worldwide audience and help solve problems countless other developers like him may face.
You can try out Overframe.xyz’s service for yourself by visiting their site, or stay up to date on Gaddafi’s projects by following him on Twitter.
We’re wrapping up 2019 with the fourth installment of our “How To Get Online” series: Expand Your Business or Project. Last quarter we shared how to expertly grow your audience, and now you can learn how to take your business or project to the next level by expanding it.
Q4 of the XYZ Quarterly outlines how to grow your brand within your current market, and how to extend into new markets. Learn four key ways to ramp up your business or project and meet the .xyz community members who have gone on to expand in exciting ways after their brand’s initial success. Also, catch up with all things XYZ as we share our many accomplishments from 2019.
BigBlueDot.xyz – Network Solutions customer (Canada)
As our regular readers probably know, personal websites can be great tools to promote your portfolio of work, attract clients for your freelance business, or share your opinions and expertise. They are also great for documenting milestones and life events so that you can look back on them yourself or share them with family and friends around the world. If you’ve ever considered launching a personal website of your own on which you plan to share your unique life experiences, then be sure to make it the best it can be with some inspiration from this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, BigBlueDot.xyz.
BigBlueDot.xyz chronicles the global adventures of the Colebrook 5, a family from Red Deer Canada who traveled to 21 countries across an 18-month journey. Throughout their trip, the family kept a running blog of their stops and recounted stories of the amazing things they were able to do in each new place. The site’s navigation bar includes a map to follow the family around the world, as well as a countries tab to find what they saw in each amazing new place. Clicking the “About” section will give you an introduction to the family, display their trip itinerary, and explain the Carl Sagan-inspired meaning of BigBlueDot.xyz.
At the outset of both the blog and the Colebrook’s quest, the three children of the family shared which countries they were most eager to visit, what they were excited and nervous about, and what they would and would not miss from home. The posts evolved to become a personal blog which each child kept updated on BigBlueDot.xyz, serving as a unique teacher for their earliest experiences publishing content on the web.
The family was able to visit many beautiful places and landmarks, and to share that experience they managed an Instagram page, @bigbluedot.xyz. Their handle exactly matches their domain, and promotes their full website’s URL so their Instagram followers know where to visit to get the full experience. You can also view their Instagram photos, along with each post’s comments and likes, directly on the BigBlueDot.xyz website.
The Colebrooks’ trip covered thousands of miles, dozens of countries, and innumerable unforgettable experiences. BigBlueDot.xyz impressively covers that ground and serves as an inspiration to anyone looking to launch a personal blog. Chronicle your next big adventure, just like the Colebrook family did, with your own .xyz domain.
