The meaning of Variment

The search for a new brand

In 2023 our company’s name was Propl. We found that the name was difficult to pronounce. Was it “propel” or “proper”? It was hard for people to remember and find any association with.

So in 2024, we decided to rebrand. Instead of starting to search for a new name and color palettes, we started with defining our core values by using the Brand Archetypes wheel.

Image source: Crowdspring

From there we mapped out which of the archetypes would be best reflected with our customers and users. A few of the options stood out for us:

The Everyman 

What it means: Connection with others

The Caregiver

What it means: Care, protect and nurture

The Magician

What it means: Turn dreams into reality

Ultimately, we wanted the brand to not be limited to the product but to a bigger vision and values. We all agreed internally within the team that we wanted our culture to be equitable, supportive, inclusive and transparent. We want the relationship with our customers and users to be built on trust and credibility. After a few rounds of customer and user interviews, we chose The Everyman as our brand archetype. 

Variment: Variation

The next step was to find a suitable name based on the archetype and available domain names for the website. These were some of the options: WorkVibe, SkillSim, Variment.

Variment ended up the winner.

In Finnish, it means variant. In French, it means variation. At least based on Google translate. 

Variation can apply to a lot of things at work: your training program, work tasks, co-workers. We want our simulations to connect health and care workers to the people they are working with through better and more variety in training.  

Following the name, we continued the work by choosing color palettes that reflected our brand. There were two options at the end, of which we chose one of them - the teal color which you see today. It was also a process done together with our users.

The people in the process

It takes a village to build a startup. The branding exercise involved many people in the process. 

Even Ifar Fossland who worked earlier at Mars Brand Strategy and introduced me to the book Rockets and Rebels which we based our work on.

Joy Michon who designed our logo and color palette. 

Sriramya Juttiga who worked with us on UX research and led the rebranding process. 

And many of the users in the early days who participated in the process and gave us their input.

Our work does not stop here.

To be continued....