Merlin Media Origins Explained?

Perhaps. Some may remember our original name: Toucan Studios. In 1996, we wanted to incorporate as "Toucan, Inc." but the state of California said that there was already a photography studio that used "Toucan" in their name. So we had to find a new name. It's not easy, believe us! Numerous great and not-so-great names came to mind, including "MediaDog," "InterActive Developments," and "Those People Who Do Great Video and Other Multimedia Projects." But the one that we all liked was Merlin Media.

Read the extended version here.

Once we got the idea of Merlin firmly embedded in our heads, next came finding a corporate image. We hired an artist and gave her instructions to come up with "something that can be associated with Merlin, the Magician." She came up with more than two dozen good ideas (some much better than others) and a few clunkers. We really had a hard time trying to choose which one to go with.

We could write a long, drawn out story about our search for an image to go along with our new company name ‹ and you don't even want to know what all it takes to get a new logo trademarked! The simple truth is that when we decided on "Merlin" the first word that came to mind was magic.

When you think of Merlin Media, we want you to think of magic, too. Digital video magic... interactive multimedia magic... Internet magic... communication magic!

In the end, we just couldn't narrow it down to any fewer than four. Here are all the runners up. Three became our set of business cards. *See if you can figure out which other logo we used on the back of our official Merlin Media T-shirts.

* No prizes are involved... but we have had dozens of emails over the years with some pretty good guesses.

 

 

 

 

 

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