The Early Bird Offer allows selected beta-sign ups to download and apply their brand an unlimited amount of times, for the one-off price of only £10! Momblo.com were the first to take advantage of this special offer and within minutes of creating their design, it was up and running on their website – take a look!

They started out as a secondary ticketing marketplace, offering an online portal where customers could access tickets to concerts, sports, musicals and theatre events across the globe… So whether you are travelling to China on holiday or visiting the United Kingdom for a short period, Momblo can offer the best selection of entertainment venues. They also offer a 100% guarantee on authenticity of tickets, payment, and delivery before the event.

Building on that success, they now also offer customers the ability to join free guestlists and book tables at the hottest clubs, working directly with promoters worldwode to guarantee the night is a success!

So what did they want to achieve from using buildabrand.com…

Founder of Momblo.com Pogos Saiadian gives us his thoughts:

‘In a market that is often populated by fraudulent providers, branding is very important. What we wanted to achieve with our Momblo brand, was to communicate the trust and professionalism that stands behind the brand, as well as the fact that we are a fun company, specialising in entertainment.’

Did buildabrand.com live up to the task…

‘With a few intuitive clicks, I directly chose what I would like my brand to communicate, a logo that reflected this, as well as the layout and colours. It took me between 10-15 minutes to try multiple variations before choosing my design, at a very affordable price. I think the service is a must for any online vendor; whether you are a reseller on eBay or operate a website, buildabrand will make your services look professional and trustworthy!’

Wow thanks! Check out their new branding and search for an exciting event in your area!

If you haven’t had your invite, don’t worry we are still working through them… and there is still time to sign up – visit our homepage buildabrand.com

We were really impressed with the use of the brand symbols, how it was used on both their website and twitter, and wanted to find out a bit more about Cook Farms history…

They started out in 2004 when Mike retired from the Army, Marci then joined her husband in the family business two years later. What started out as a relaxing activity has now gone from strength to strength; with a speciality of Rhode Island Red and New Hampshire Red Chickens, a jewellery craft line, and regular science projects with the local schools… this is one busy farm!

Here, Marci Cook tells us why she liked using buildabrand.com so much:

“I found out about buildabrand.com through @MGrosheim from www.thesocialtweep.com when I asked him about his logo. He directed me to your site and the rest is history! Your site is very easy to use. I love it!!! I love that you narrow down the choices for us and that if it doesn’t “look right” or fit, we can always go back and rework it. Everyone that I talk to says they love our logo! They ask about it and I direct them to buildabrand.com.”

We are really happy to see buildabrand.com helping a small and inspiring business, keep up the good work! Our designers Gilles and Cecile were equally impressed, having designed the bird as a cool symbol for an independent and confident brand.

So what does the future hold for these new brands at Cook Farms?

They plan to use their new brand on a sign for their yard, business cards, t-shirts and stationary in the future… WOW, we can’t wait to see it all popping up!

A fellow brand builder in his own right, Michael allows companies and individuals to reserve a day in his calendar where he will promote them all over Twitter, Facebook and his daily blog.

The Social Tweep started out as a response to Michael losing his job over a year and a half ago and deciding to work for himself. Finding the perfect avenue to utilise his fondness for engaging with people (and talking in general) has resulted in big brand names such as Starbucks and Abc using his services!

We have Jason Sadler, founder of iwearyourshirt.com to thank for introducing Michael to the site.
Here’s is what he thought of his buildabrand.com experience:

“The website is very easy to use. Creating a logo which allows you to include personality is amazing. Coupling pictures with style, tone, outlook and character options is very unique. Having the option to go back and forth during the process, making changes to find the perfect logo, and the number of logos provided based on some very basic questions helped me find the perfect logo.”

Michael is very happy to have created the “perfect” logo with buildabrand.com, one that shows his fun side, is eye-catching and prompts people to ask more about The Social Tweep. Well… that makes us very happy too! You can even purchase your own jumper or t-shirt featuring the design through his Tweep Store!

The symbol was designed by Gilles and Cecile as part of a series inspired by happy, chirpy, twittering birds – very fitting for Michael’s brand, whoopie it’s working!

So what does the future hold for The Social Tweep?

Michael has big future plans to build on the community effect of his business – prompting followers to engage and be in with a chance of winning prizes from the brand of the day!

We wish Michael every success with The Social Tweep and will be watching his tweets eagerly!

Our aim? To bring business and individual ideas to life by matching them with great designs!

We are looking for designers from any background or discipline to create unique brand symbols which can be purchased and used by our customers. They can be everything from intelligent everyday logos to urban inspired graphics and even unique, stylised or illustrative characters.

You will have the freedom to upload a wide range and unlimited number of designs and set the price point yourself. We will then match your design to our users and you will receive 50% 70% of the net sales price! That could be anything from £35 ($56 or €39) up to £1050 ($1,705 or €1,175), you decide.

Sound like a good idea to you? You can register your interest here and we’ll make sure you are invited to upload your designs!

Need a bit more information?

It’s so easy – A quick registration so we know who you are and how we can pay you is all  it takes to start uploading designs.

No stress – We don’t ask you to define colours or select fonts, you just create brand symbols and upload them instantly.

You have control - There are no design briefs, restricting site styles or controlling customers to deal with; you decide what you want to upload, when, where and how many designs!

Everyone can get involved – Whether you are a student or graduate in London, a freelancer in Sydney, a professional in Berlin, or hobby designer in Tokyo, you can upload your work for sale on buildabrand.com.

Simple Design Upload - All you need to do is design a vector based brand symbol saved as an SVG file. We can even show you how to do this if you’re not sure.

One price, one sale – You set the price for your design and one lucky customer receives that symbol exclusively for their brand. Once an individual symbol is purchased, it will be removed from the site and all associated rights are transferred to the customer.

Royalties – You will receive a 50% 70% share of the net sale price for each brand symbol sold. Remember, there’s no limit to the amount you can upload!

Convinced? Register your interest here so you can be one of the first to experience it for yourself!

(We don’t condone this sort of behaviour but love the outcome it creates!)

Our beta testers have been really impressed with the ease of use, functionality of the site and ability to create relevant brands. These are some of the brands that have been created so far… (let us know your favourite in the comments)

There have also been plenty of suggestions for the team to take on board and excellent feedback to help improve the branding experience; we are now working hard to make these last few tweaks!

Here’s a round up of our favourite feedback so far and we’re really looking forward to hearing more…!

- we LOVE @buildabrand – we made our brand in 30 mins flat! love it. thanks chaps @engagefirst

- Having so much fun with @buildabrand Beta that I am not getting any work done today. oh well, this is much more entertaining. LOVE IT!!! @McGrosheim

- @theycallmeShua: @iwearyourshirt oh and i got an @buildabrand invite today. its cooler than i expected i have to admit

- @TriFunk: thanks for the invite @buildabrand wow! just playing around in the site and I am blown away. this is going to change the world! love it

- Thanks a lot!! Just made my first logo. Really cool end easy at first glance. Looking forward to test it in full … andersbn

- jonlongoria: Davey, want to say ya’ll did a great job. Left a lot of constructive criticism in feedback, hope this takes off! @daveshanley @buildabrand

- @buildabrand Yes…I had so much fun…I’m wondering what to do with the last of it [credits] because we do other things here…so I’m saving them @TheMarciFactor

- thanks a lot for your email! I was really looking forward to it…Merry Christmas and thank you for the great gift - Aspiring Entrepreneur in Maritime Equipment and Services

- I starting playing around with the site and it is fantastic. Love the usability and design. Ariel Remer, Aspiring Entrepreneur in Clothing Line

- The whole process is really intuitive, I like it. – Benjamin Larralde, Apiring Entrepreneur in funding platform for individuals

- Thanks so much for the invite. Your team has built an impressive site – Dennis Lyandres, Early-stage non-profit organisation

- Simple and clean interface generally.  Good staged process – Philip Wilkinson, Founder & CEO at Crowdstorm

- I saw a few logos there that really inspired me, and that could become new the logo for our company! – Alicia Navarro, Company Founder and CEO of Skimlinks

- Worked really intuitively and easily – Kate Siddiqui, Marketing and Editorial Manager at start-up company – www.leaveitout.co.uk

The report highlights the trends set for 2010 in different markets, including design and predicts the impact this will have on brands.

Author Jason Little, creative director in the Paris office of Landor Associates writes:

Computers have given rise to a means of creating visual graphics without direct human involvement; designers can set general conceptual parameters and then let the program do the rest. Soon software will be capable of generating every element of an identity system: logo variations, color palettes, imagery, typography, you name it.

Check, Check and Check! buildabrand is already capable of this and we are really excited to see it as a trend for 2010!

It’s definitely worth a read and nicely rounds up the brands that will stand out in 2010 for each area, so take a look:

Jason Little on trends in design

We plan to have the design page framed anyway!

They bring a unique mix of skills and interests to the team, including film festival organization, knowledge of Mandarin, exhibitions at London Design Festival, First Class degrees and rock concerts!

With bundles of enthusiasm and ambition they are ready to take on the world… well the buildabrand world to start with! Welcome to the team!

You can find out more about our new team-members from these links and also check out some of Rebekah’s design work below …

Sophia Balakina - Cara Marie Payne - Rebekah Burke

To see more of Rebekah’s design work visit www.rebekahburke.co.uk

Our very own CFO Rob Carter showed them how easy it is to use buildabrand.com and they were delighted with the results, as you can see!

brilliant new @EngageFirst brand created in the pub with @buildabrand online app. Genius http://twitpic.com/ujr3x

we LOVE @buildabrand – we made our brand in 30 mins flat! love it. thanks chaps!

@RACarter look at my profile on normal twitter – ive put the logo all over the place! woop wooooop! : D

Check out the EngageFirst design on their twitter page, we LOVE IT! Looking forward to seeing more buildabrand creations popping up!

Guess we better get down to the pub now…

Buildabrand is complicated. In fact, it’s very complicated! To give an example; we used quite a lot of JavaScript on the site interface to make the brand building experience clean and swift. Some people have even assumed that we were using Flash because of the fluid interactivity. There are currently over 5,071 lines of custom JavaScript used in our interface. Just to give you some perspective; you can write JavaScript versions of classic arcade games like Pac-Man and Tetris in less than 400 lines!

There might be some Finnish super hackers out there laughing at 5k lines of JavaScript code, but this is just the start of the story! We have used a lot of different components to build different tools and services. Our architecture is primarily Java based. Naturally that meant lots of pure Java code. As a matter of fact, right now there are 35,231 lines of pure Java code in our closed beta.

On top of all that code we have over 300 different configuration, language, and visual display files. They contain: 12,356 lines of HTML/JSP, 1,358 lines of XML and 6,185 line of CSS / XSL. So as you can see, it is now a case of making sure that 35k+ lines of Java, 5k+ lines of JavaScript and all our configurations, content and display code work together. It also means making sure it works in your browser and that you get a fluid experience.

For a comparison, lets take a look at the source code statistics for the worlds favorite web browser Firefox: http://www.ohloh.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest.

As you can see, the scale of the inner workings of builabrand are not all that different to something like Firefox!

Another important fact to mention is that we don’t have a large team of developers (yet). We are still only a small team. I have personally tried to grow more arms so we can ramp up our products and features quicker, but no matter how much glow in the dark paint I eat – it just won’t happen.

Since our Techcrunch article we have added over 9,000 lines of Java to the project, new features, new enhancements, and a complete e-commerce system (not running in the closed beta). However, I can safely say that it’s almost ready! Our closed beta testers are rolling in now and the last few quirks will be worked out. We’re be throwing open the doors to everyone very soon!

If you have any questions about the technology or if you would like our advice with your own architecture, then give me a shout at hellodave@buildabrand.com.

Cheerio for now,

- Dave

Yesterday Jason Sadler from iwearyourshirt.com hung out in Jacksonville Florida wearing our buildabrand.com t-shirt for the day. Whilst filming, blogging and taking photos he generated a storm of new twitter followers, new beta testers and our first YouTube video, pretty impressive!

You can check out his blog here featuring his daily recap and the buildabrand.com photo “I’m on my DeerPhone at Angies Subs” which made it into Jason’s’ top 5 out of 1,251 taken so far this year!

Jason used buildabrand.com to create an identity in a few minutes, describing one of the best parts as “you don’t need ANY design or technical skills to use it” – see, it really is that easy! You can see the what he created on his blog!

We also gave Jason 10 beta invites to give away to startups who need support with their branding. His tweeting, blogging and videos amassed an amazing 4500% increase in beta sign-ups – we hope the lucky winners below are taking advantage of being chosen!

• Leslie S – Personal Chef
• Christien – Golf Articles
• Andrew Brodsky – DMB Pictures
• Mike – Apartment Locator
• Christopher Hiller – Social Camping Retail
• Nate Clark – Dog/Cat Salon
• Wes Wyatt – Word of Mouth Works
• Becca Tieder – Unite for Change
• Andrea Wrentz – Women’s Apparel
• John Hill – Massage Studio

Thanks to Jason and everyone who followed, tweeted or signed up for buildabrand.com yesterday. Here are some of our favourite tweets:

‘Had an invite to try out @buildabrand. i love it. nice content–actually made me think.‘ @kganderson

‘buildabrand.com looks like a promising brand building site http://tinyurl.com/mgwfco @iwearyourshirt streaming now http://tinyurl.com/546hp6.‘ @Renee3

‘A Closer Look at BuildABrand’s Closed Beta: I don’t think I can say much more about how cool this actually is, othe… http://bit.ly/8v67iO‘ – @CCMSWebDesigns

‘Just been using http://bit.ly/UM7Kv (buildabrand) – very impressive‘ - @PJWilikinson

‘Just had a play with www.buildabrand.com @buildabrand - so slick, can’t wait for @champney and @daveshanley to let this baby out‘ – @eski009

‘@iwearyourshirt dude that www.buildabrand.com is awesome…did all the beta invites go?‘ @alunevans