We’re often asked how we came up with the name “RockMelt,” so we thought we’d tell the story here.
Although our name might make you think of volcanoes and lava, we’re not big geology buffs.
“RockMelt” was the result of a three-week long brainstorming where we came up with names we liked, tried to buy the domain, couldn’t afford the astronomically high price quote, and then had to start all over again.
Some of the names we came up with included Fringe, Groove, Take3, Frowser, Blarge, BamBam, Kodiak, Acunda, Avogadro, Wamp, and Yoke. As ridiculous as some of these may sound, it was nothing compared to the cost of the domain names – some were as high as $500,000!
We found ourselves asking why we didn’t buy a ton of domain names in college. But more importantly, we still needed a different approach to finding a name.
We wanted a name that was memorable, something that was easy to say and easy to spell. We started throwing words we liked up on the whiteboard. There were a lot of different words but we liked “Melt.” Since “Melt” is a soft word, it needed a strong or hard complement. We thought about Diamond, Shark, Mountain, Steel and a host of others but the simplicity of “Rock” stood out. RockMelt.com was unregistered so we jumped on it – for $12, a far cry from the $500,000.
While RockMelt had the right characteristics for a name, we were still worried about the logo and creating the right look and feel. We worked with the good folks at DesignMap in San Francisco to develop the visual identity. We initially started going down the volcano path and came up with some good-looking volcanoes. But when shrunk down to be a desktop icon, even the best brown and triangular volcano looked like a little brown pile of s…. That wasn’t going to work.
We were close to giving up and going back to the drawing board when, on a Friday afternoon, one of the designers at DesignMap did a sketch in his notebook of the Earth. It looked awesome and by Monday, we were settled on the name and making final refinements to the logo.
Now, a year and a half later, we remain in with love the name – it’s the best $12 we’ve ever spent.
