The Origin Of The Tediware Brand

It’s been fun watching Meta and OpenAI launch AI products with the design sensibility I developed for Tediware two years ago.

When I started developing the brand, I wanted something that fit with the vision I had for EDI software that is truly easy to use.

At the time, I also believed AI had tremendous potential, and in particular, that it was the key to making EDI - a complex and unfriendly technology - easier to use and more accessible.

To many people, AI feels intimidating, even hostile. For some reason, technologists insist on making that worse with branding that emphasizes the high-tech nature of their products. They use cool tones, especially blue. The least creative versions of these designs feature similar motifs: electrons, sparks, robot brains, beams of blue light, etc.

I decided to go in the opposite direction. I wanted the brand to be warm and friendly, with an earthy colour palette. The app wouldn’t even offer dark mode.

Next, I needed a name, and I wanted it to have the word “edi” in it. A lot of people tack the word “edi” onto the end of some other word when they do this.

This frequently creates a problem: let’s say we want our name to be TrailEDI, because we’re going to lead people to better solutions (or whatever). It reads fine until you register trailedi-com, which might read like “trail edi” to some people, but reads like “trailed” + “i” to others (they’d pronounce it “traildee”). I see this confusing pattern all the time.

I’m not sure what brainwave brought “Tedi” to me, but the moment I thought of it, I knew it was perfect. What is friendlier than everyone’s favourite stuffed animal?

There were just two problems. First, my IP lawyer advised against trying to register a trademark that was just one letter different from “Stedi” (an excellent company also in the space), even though the common meanings of the words (“steady” vs. “teddy”) are distinct. Second, the .com wasn’t available, and I still think .coms are the best domains.

I was out for a bike ride when the name “Tediware” came to me. It rhymes with “teddy bear”, the .com was available, and “ware” suffixes are cool.

I registered the domain name and the trademark, then leaned on my talented designer friend Luc Mikelsons to help flesh out the brand, which combines a refined wordmark that has a technology feel to it, with subtle hints that communicate that the bear association is a deliberate choice. The brand supports interesting creative directions, too, like the bear kaomoji ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ for command-line tools, or these business cards.

Meta and OpenAI’s latest products, Muse and Dots respectively, lean into a similarly friendly aesthetic. The beams of blue light have been replaced by adorably helpful creatures.

I don’t know how many millions of dollars it took them to arrive where I started two years ago, but good job, guys.