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ComicBookBin vs The Comic Book Bin vs The Bin

By Hervé St-Louis
May 11, 2012 - 18:52

So it's now ComicBookBin, instead of The Comic Book Bin. It's been "The" since way back in 2002 but in 2010, a few things made me change how we had always been called. The first was related to our iPhone app. For some convoluted reason that makes sense for bean counters, the app had to be known as ComicBookBin no space, no "The". So for our Android and webos apps we did the same and called them ComicBookBin instead. It's a small change that only people who work in branding and corporate identities would ever notice.

No one ever brought it up. We like to refer to ourselves as The Bin, internally, and many people even refer to us as Comic Bin - although that's another company that of course came after us, so we have prior usage of the combination of the words Comic and Bin. You gotta do this in this world infested with patents and trademark lawyers.

As I worked on the redesign of the site whose phase three is almost complete, I decided to simplify to ComicBookBin.

For some reason I never heeded the warning Sean Parker told mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network - drop The Facebook and call it Facebook.

Yeah, it was like an epiphany, a year after first seeing the movie and reviewing it for ComicBookBin!

I think it sounds cleaner and sharper. It's also more personal. It feels less like The Economist and more like BoingBoing. Could you imagine, The Boing Boing? Huh.

If you work in branding you'll appreciate the importance of one solid brand and how a few variations can influence a lot of things.

Internally, I guess we'll still refer to ourselves as "The Bin" but you won't see that coming from me on any kind of post I write. I'm after all the guardian of the integrity of ComicBookBin's brand -whooh, did that sound self important and serious.

But seriously, what do you think about this realignment of our name. Probably not much. It doesn't change much for you. It's still the same site, the same people, and the name is pronounced pretty much the same. All that's changed are a few details.

One thing for sure, the arcane way I had of referring to our apps as ComicBookBin and this site as The Comic Book Bin is over. Now it's all ComicBookBin.

Now, if I could only find the time to change all of the instances that still mention ComicBookBin - and change the logo. That'll take me a while to clean up.

cheers

Last Updated: November 10, 2023 - 14:53