Anderra is the latest edition to the toggle portfolio and is an online guide to natural body care. The project came to us as a concept, so not only did we design and build the site, but we also branded it too.

Naming

One of the main routes we explored for the naming of this site was Latin. The reason for this was that it gave us something a bit more abstract to work with. We had decided to create an invented name (examples: Tesco, Frijj,
Hoover, iPod) in order to avoid words often associated with sites of this type (green, natural, body mind spirit etc). We found a three key Latin words:

• Pondera: meaning balance
• Terra: meaning Earth and land
• Animo: meaning nature

We started to cut these words up and splice them together. The name anderra was created by merging ‘pondera’ (balance) and ‘terra’ (Earth & land).

Logo

After we had created the name, the next step was the logo.

We had done masses of brain storming and sketching for the anderra logo, but felt we weren’t quite there yet. I was having a shower one
weekend, I picked up a body bar to use and noticed some suds that had been left on and dried. The pattern these suds formed made me think of anderra…so I took a photo.

We took the photo into illustrator and started looking at the organic shapes left by the suds.

Although the image was of soap suds, we felt the organic shapes were a good route for a number of reasons: The Earth use to made up of a super continent called Pangea. Pangea started to break and separated to create the oceans continents as we know them now. The shapes are also organic forms that feel very natural – there is no rigid ‘man made’ grid to which all the shapes much align. Much of the focus on natural body care is on the ingredients, and we felt these organic shapes also resembled molecues – the separate parts making something greater than itself.

We developed the logo as much as possible in black and white because we wanted to create a strong logo regardless of the colours or effects applied. We work on the thinking that if it looks good in plain black, it’ll look even better with colour applied.

Although the idea originated from soap suds, the final application of the mark to the logo suggests natural and organic.

The final solution

Then we added the polish! We chose blue and brown – colours of land, sea and sky.

You can see more of the anderra project in our portfolio or visit the site.