I'm a copywriter. And a former designer.
Unfortunately this means I'm kinda anal about how things both look and sound. When the idea for a client portal first flashed into my mind, I named it Sync, because that was the easiest working title I could come up with.
Over the next few days, as I was building out the app, I struggled to find a suitable name. Sync was an overused name in the SaaS space. The name I wanted had to instantly convey a sense of flow and ease, be easy to spell, and have an available domain name.
A few names I experimented with:
- Symphony — my name is Melody. I thought it was rather poetic to have a music-related name for my app, but Symphony was just a tad pretentious.
- Fresh Sync — because my copywriting studio is named Fresh Pages I was quite taken with the idea of having a Fresh brand, except it would risk being confused with Freshworks.
- Braid — I liked the idea of multiple threads being woven together, but Braid sounded too amateur. "I'll send it over on Braid" just didn't sound right.
- Tapestry — almost immediately dismissed because it sounded… well, archaic.
- Loom — also immediately dismissed because it's already well known as a recording app.
Then I hit on Chord. Hmm. Why not? Chord, in musical terms, means a few notes played in harmony and sounding like one. It was a good metaphor for calmly bringing together the otherwise hectic and often discordant workflows that a creative business owner unfortunately has to put up with.
It had positive connotations — struck a chord, for instance — and was fairly easy to spell. And it just sounded like one of those names, you know? Apple. Notion. Figma. Chord. Maybe it's the plosive /k/ that makes it sound decisive, more present somehow.
But anyway, Chord it was. I also liked the logo — it has three lines, very simple, woven together in a way that suggested musicality but also a loop. Honestly I didn't overthink the logo. It looked good as a submark as well.
So there we have it. Chord. I'll send it over on Chord. I'm using Chord as my client portal. It sounds good, doesn't it?