Naming, Logo Design and Domain for Launch
A brainwave with way too many inspirations. And deciding to go all in.
I spent time thinking about what ClueDay should look like and what emotion it should convey. It was a daily word game puzzle, and it would have clues in it.
The name Signal was always a placeholder. I needed to figure out naming, plus see if I could get more inspiration for associated features. I named it ClueDay (literally no brainpower was used here). I did check if the domain was available and it was, but I didn't buy it until I was 100% sure I was going to continue working on it.
PS: I did a get a recommendation that I should name it Cluedle, but I wanted to set up my own identity.
- The NeXT reference: I really like the logo of Steve Jobs' NeXT computers, with its 4 letters in almost a grid-like shape. I wanted ClueDay to have that same energy: clean, considered, a little serious.
- The color palette: I'm a big fan of Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. The book is in orange and blue and that's how the logo's original color palette was born.
Two weeks of user testing revealed the Wordle colors are way too ingrained, and humanity has a whole has decided GREEN is the color of confirmation. A past future version of me sat and updated the color scheme.
Doubling down
When I kept coming back to ClueDay instead of moving on; I made the call to invest properly. I bought clueday.com knowing the .com was available and that signaled commitment, both to players and to myself.
Hosting with Vercel
I used Vercel to host and connect the domain. I bought in my GitHub repository and Vercel deployed it automatically. For a solo project moving fast was exactly the kind of zero-friction deployment I was looking for.
Final Logo
Along with the fact that Blue wasn't signalling FINAL location, I also felt the logo was flat and wasn't standing out so I decided based on Notion's logo to give it a dimension, which is why there is this shadow effect to it. As green and orange became the final colors I literally just pulled up an Indian flag image and color-picked to get the right shades. Tadaaah!
ClueDay was born on April 4, 2026.
ClueDay Final Logo — How quickly you crack a case? Find out at clueday.com.