Personally, because I’m quite nosy, I’m really interested in how small businesses come by their names, so, at risk of firebombing any mystique, and because people have asked, I’m going to explain how I came upon b.o.d. 

I spent ages trying to think of names that were perceptive and insightful, that perhaps described something of my process, of design, of typography, of the way I think. To no avail. None of it worked. Well actually, I really liked Dot Design or Dot Dot Dot, thinking of the print process and, in the second one, also of the ellipsis, words as yet unspoken. When I searched for it online though, I found variations were already well-used by all sorts of businesses, including online print bureaux. Perhaps it was impossible to come up with a totally original name? It was disheartening and eventually I changed tack. 

I did some more burrowing around and noted that many small businesses have apparently random names that don’t appear to mean anything but are eye-catching. Having worked my way through endless animals, plants and literary quotations, I sat at my kitchen table and my eyes alighted on our caravan, which I love. And I loved the name caravan for my business. I thought it was cool as. But I Googled it and found that there is already an excellent design agency in this country called Caravan. I also noticed that ‘caravan design’ is a difficult name to Google, because the design and construction of actual caravans is a thing. 

And eventually I noticed our front door. A big orange door. Visually striking, and the beauty of both books and doors, of course, is that they can be opened onto exciting new spaces. 

I started with Orange Door, but that’s taken, and it seemed a bit ‘curt’. Various other unsuccessful orange-door-based configurations followed. I chewed it over with my friend Rudy Butler (who designed my logo and website) and we tried Little Orange Door, which was quite cute but I felt it sounded to me like a gift shop – and I didn’t want to be cute. It’s also a bit of a tangle to say.  So we came to Big Orange Door. Positive, strong, easy on the tongue. It just stuck.