Mordex · OB2 House

The founder and investors chose our mark.

Challenge

Mordex was early. User interviews were still running and the company hadn't settled which part of the e-sports market it belonged in.

That made the identity brief unusual: the mark had to cover a range of possible services and stay viable if the business strategy moved under it.

The custom-drawn wordmark, before any symbol. The counter of the O is deliberately a clean circle, because that is where the strategy was going to have to move.

Approach

In a workshop with the founder and startup consultant we pulled the name apart. Mordex turned out to be a compression of 'more' and 'dexterity'.

Combined with the goal of getting people to e-sports events across continents, that gave us the paper aeroplane: travel, and something made by hand, back to dexterity. The plane flies through the globe of the O, leaving a trail.

We custom-drew the typeface and explored a set of symbols that could sit inside the O, so the mark could be re-pointed later without redrawing the wordmark.

Symbol routes, drawn as standalone roundels first.

Then tested inside the lockup rather than in isolation. A compass reads as navigation, and navigation is not what the name means.

A jet: travel, but nothing about dexterity.

A jet on a radar ring: busier, and no closer.

The paper aeroplane. Travel, and something made by hand, which is the 'dexterity' half of the name, back again.

Outcome

The founder and investors selected our paper-aeroplane mark as the identity to take forward.

Because the symbol sits in the counter of the O rather than being welded to the letterforms, the mark could be re-pointed later without redrawing the wordmark, which was the whole reason for building it that way.