New Face, Same Values

After nearly two years we have decided it’s time to refresh our branding. It’s time for something new and exciting. We looked back at the original inspiration for the name Mycroft.

Some may think it’s based on Mycroft Holmes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s series, but the actual inspiration was a sentient AI in the Science Fiction book “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” In this book the computer “Mycroft Holmes IV” becomes self aware and helps the citizens of the Moon create their own nation. The imagery of the Earth and the Moon became an inspiration for our new design, not only is it a nod to the origin of the name it also represents the aspirations and achievement of humankind.

One of our core principles at Mycroft is Fast Open Simple Strong, or FOSS, which coincidentally also stands for Free Open Source Software. Following those principles we set out to create a new design that reflects the goals and values of Mycroft.

Here at Mycroft we are working hard to build the Open Voice Assistant. What do we mean by open? Those of you in our developer community know we mean open source, but open means much more than that. To us open means free to use on any platform, free from walled gardens and other restrictive business models, open and honest communication with our customers, and open knowledge of how your data is used.

As we fill in the gaps to create a stronger brand we will be engaging with you, the community, to get feedback and make sure what we are doing aligns with your beliefs as well.

Our new mark reflects our values, the design is friendly, inviting, and simple (but not simplistic). This mark will be able to represent Mycroft for a long time and in a variety of ways. We are working on animating the design to represent feedback from Mycroft when listening, speaking or thinking. As we grow we will use the mark to provide a variety of other feedback states from emotions to alerts.

Our colors are more inviting, fresh, technical, bright and are meant to inspire friendly interaction. Mycroft Blue is a fresh new take on the color we have been using since the beginning. All of our secondary colors represent the versatility both of our brand and company.

We are using Roboto in all of our new branding. It’s a good fit aesthetically and since it is an open source font it fits with our company ethos. We also are using Roboto as the base for our LogoType, but we modified the type slightly by rounding the corners.

Friends, stay calm. There is still more to come. It’s going to take some time to get everything updated. Keep track of us, both on the web and on the road. As our company keeps growing and spreading, so will our visual identity.