A personal brand is very important, even more so today than say a few years ago. I admit I haven’t spent as much time on mine as I should have, so I’m relieved to announce to absolutely noone that Indieby (ix) is now ifthis.
Indieby was great, i loved creating this brand. At the time, I was really busy with film stuff. I was on the set of both Certifiable Series and spin-off This IS Showbiz, having small roles in a few of my friend’s indie films, learning 3D animation and VFX, and writing my first short script heavily influenced the creation of IX.
I saw a need in the market, and started to design and build for it,
the domain was ix.watch, so the user's urls would be .watch/art
I was hanging out with only indie film makers, talking about the usual struggles of making a low-budget film; distribution, design, display. I saw a need in the market, and started to design and build for it.
Having founded a nano-SaaS Coppr, I learned to build a membership platform + user dashboard with nothing more than a few nocode tools + some python and js nodes interjected somewhere in between. So I thought, I'll build something like a local sxsw, see the ix homage now?
I would provide my friends with a platform to elegantly display their films and other works, that they could easily self manage.
The discord would've been a community of makers, creators, filmmakers, and niche freelancers studying the art and economics of content, sharing their work while hiring each other for projects.
The domain was ix**.watch**, so the user's urls would be .watch/art.
That was a glorious vision, and one not lost.
I'm still going to continue building IX, just now under something like:
— watch.ifthis/project-catchphrase (wip).
The name ifthis is not only an homage to one of my favorite principles of structured computer programming; IF-THEN-ELSE Statements, but something i say a lot; what if this were true..., embodying the notion of exploring possibilities and outcomes. so out of that came ifthis.
➥ root domain slaps: ifth.is
➥ sub domains are just as great, eg: sn=shortname, perfect shortlink and makes you think: sn.ifth.is/art; another is what.ifth.is to support the newsletter web page, etc.
➥ branched names are so brandable, ifthis films, ifthis design, etc. are all so clean and simple to understand.
➥ simple brand identity
i'm going to design the identity to be as basic ☺︎ and effective as IF-THEN-ELSE is, thinking a greige base, dark grey supporting my favorite color: #BDFA14.
➥ I have been writing a few posts for my upcoming newsletter;
working title if this, made logic.
➥ I'll also be rebranding the How I do This podcast to What if this? with an accompanying new, shorter more agile format.
Extend read as to why i love the name ifthis so much:
Its minimalistic in concept, allowing for complex logic to be encapsulated within clear, conditional blocks. From the most basic
If stock=0 Then message= order new stock
Else message= there is stock
End If
–to something more complex like a function that calculates the escape velocity from a celestial body given its mass and radius using 3 lines of Python code:
def escape_velocity(mass, radius): G = 6.67430e-11 # Gravitational constant in m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 return (2 * G * mass / radius) ** 0.5
With that... see you on the moon. 🚀
Until the next one, art.