Diary of a Network Geek

Or, why wear someone else’s logo?

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about logos and branding lately.
I often wonder what makes people choose to wear particular logos or promotional “gear”. Now, as a die-hard Novell fan, I often wear Novell-branded polo shirts. Most of them I got from sales staff over the years as I renewed our company’s license agreement and support contract. But, I actually bought some Novell logo gear myself once. I needed shirts and Novell’s gear wasn’t any more expensive than plain golf shirts, so, I bought some. I also wear golf shirts with the Linux mascot on them. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Linux mascot is a cute, little cartoon penguin named Tux. The chicks dig him.)

But, now that I’m thinking about rebranding both this website and a future, creative website, I’ve been thinking about getting branded merchandise for my own, personal use that ties into those brands. I mean, if I’m going to wear a logo and advertise a product, I might as well advertise my own product, right?
So, I started looking around at various on-line retailers that did custom embroidery on shirts. Naturally, there’s CafePress, but they really cater to a more sales-oriented market and are a little more low-end than I was looking to wear. Back in the day, Branders was another option that was more upscale. But, that was back in the heyday of the Internet bubble, so they were a little more high-end than I’d been looking for. Also, they have significant minimums to buy and, honestly, I don’t need 17 of the same color shirt with a custom logo on it. Well, I did some more searching and found University Fashions. They seem to be the right blend of upscale product, reasonable pricing and no minimums to buy. But, there’s also Corporate Casuals and The Logo Centre, so I’ll have to compare them all, and most likely need to get actual quotes from all three places before I decide to go forward with a purchase or not. Oh, and one other factor is that the Logo Centre seems to be in the UK. That might effect the price a bit.

In any case, my thought was, “Why wear someone else’s logo when I can promote my own brand?” So, maybe, that’s just what I’ll do. If I follow through on getting my own logo merchandise, rest assured that I’ll get pictures of it up here somehow.

Yes, Google Print.

“What does it all mean, Mr. Network Geek, sir?” you ask? Well, your Uncle Jim will tell you. It means that Google is scanning every book they can get their hands on and entering them into a great big database so you can search them. Of course, when you find what you’re looking for in that book, they’ll offer up links to on-line retailers where you can buy said book, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it? What it also means is that you can make sure that any book you want to buy has what you’re looking for actually in it before you buy it from Amazon.com
or wherever. Speaking as someone that’s bought books he later regreted spending money on, this could be a very, very cool thing.