A few weeks ago, I had to rename the sketchbooks that I’ve been producing and selling for the last year. They were called ‘Copybooks’ but that doesn’t translate well overseas (ie copybooks in Ireland are blank/lined/graph books, similar to my sketchbooks- this is not necessarily the case elsewhere).

After much going back and forward with lots of different ideas, I just couldn’t come up with something that worked. I wanted something that described what it was, a sketchbook, and something that I could use as a name, ie register a domain with it.

Finally, as I was getting close to reverting back to ‘copybooks’, as I was doodling different names and variations, I noticed that if I removed the ‘e’ in sketch, it still read as ‘sketch’.
I started emailing around the name ‘sktchbooks’ and full credit to @burkie for suggesting I removed the double-o in ‘books’. As soon as I saw that, I knew that this was what I was looking for: Sktchbks.

My attitude towards the sketchbooks was always simplicity, strip them back to the bare essentials. Stripping vowels out of the name tied in nicely with this. I registered the domain and stuck up a holding page until I could do a major branding and design exercise in the new year.

Sidenote- I registered a .com but what made me really laugh, was the possibility of registering a .cm, completely stripping vowels out of the name, so sktchbks.cm. I checked out my local domain and hosting peeps, Blacknight, and unfortunately a .cm domain is eighty euros per year, too expensive for a confusing joke, purely for my amusement. Maybe some other time.