💡 Tucows’ new software company, Wavelo, is revolutionizing the software that powers the communications industry. This is how we built a brand to tell the story.

Great brands are more than a cool logo and a catchy name. They tell a story. The better your story, the more you’ll connect with your customers.

In creating the brand for Wavelo, our small working group had a time-tested starting point for our story: the need for change in our industry.

We know we have a great product — a refreshingly simple and flexible take on telecommunications software for businesses. We defined the need that our product satisfies and concluded that what we have is an improvement on competing SaaS products in every element of function and form. This would be the overall vibe of the brand.

Starting with a guiding strategy and vision for our brand character, we pinpointed characteristics that reflect our product, but also everything traditional telecom software is not: simple, friendly and human.

Our guiding strategy statement, developed with Wavelo’s executive team
Early brand definitions

Giving the company a name and face

As designer Jess Brown developed a visual style and shopped for typefaces, the rest of the team created a framework for brand name ideas and got to brainstorming.

For a name to be considered, it needed to meet some criteria:

  • Fit our industry (telecom, software)
  • Be unique (comparative analysis, URL availability, SEO difficulty)
  • Reflect our brand character (simple, friendly, human)
  • Have a distinct tone and style

We pitched a shortlist, but our favorite was unanimous: Wavelo. It’s a combo of “wave” and “hello,” so there’s a connection to communications (wavelength, radio waves), but it also feels friendly and welcoming.

Once we had the name, it was time to get started with the design. We started by mood boarding — laying out all the ideas that we wanted the Wavelo brand to represent visually. We gathered inspiration from existing brands, sites, print materials, typefaces, etc., to help inform and shape the direction that we wanted the brand to take.

We wanted Wavelo to feel mature and established. We looked at other brands (like banks) to take inspiration from their established global presence. We also wanted it to feel tech-forward. We looked at a lot of other tech companies in the telecom space to make sure we stood out while also being a strong competitor in the industry.

We wanted the brand to be inspirational and have human elements throughout while also being familiar and intentional in all aspects of the design.

Next came the sketching phase where we explored all the ideas through the mood-boarding process. The further we developed, the more we focused on the idea of a wave — which encapsulated many of our brand goals.

And that’s how we landed on our new logo.

The Wavelo typeface has beautiful and friendly round counters. We didn’t want the logo to be too geometric so we introduced rounded edges to each letter. Its simplicity is meant to evoke confidence, without feeling too rigid.

On the other side is our icon: the wave. It’s an organic shape meant to evoke the look of a sound or radio wave. We wanted the icon to live and change with each new product that we introduce.

Problems to solve

How did we know the industry needs better software? Consumer research and comparative analysis showed us that:

  • People have negative feelings about the service they receive from telecoms
  • The software that telecoms use to deliver service is clunky and complicated

Opportunity identified! We distilled our research and discussions into core problems that would inform Wavelo’s value proposition — a critical piece for any brand.

Industry problems that need solving

Value proposition

A value proposition is a short statement that clearly communicates the value of your product to the customer. With our brand character, strategy, and industry problems defined, our value proposition basically wrote itself: “Simple software to make telecom a breeze.”

We think it’s true to our brand, speaks to our customers and summarizes our value well.

Wavelo’s value proposition

This is a new brand that is locked and loaded for success. We are excited for Wavelo to come to life over the next couple of months.

Check out Wavelo.com for updates.

About Wavelo

Wavelo provides a full suite of flexible, cloud-based software that simplifies the management of mobile and internet network access, provisioning, billing and subscription, developer tools, and more. Its software helps communication service providers minimize technological and network barriers to improve internet access worldwide. Wavelo makes telecoms a breeze.

Learn more at Wavelo.com

About Tucows

Tucows helps connect more people to the benefit of internet access through communications service technology, domain services, and fiber-optic internet infrastructure. Ting (https://ting.com/internet) delivers fixed fiber Internet access with outstanding customer support. Wavelo (http://wavelo.com) is a telecommunications software suite for service providers that simplifies the management of mobile and internet network access, provisioning, billing and subscription, developer tools, and more. OpenSRS (https://opensrs.com), Enom (https://www.enom.com) and Ascio (https://ascio.com) combined manage approximately 25 million domain names and millions of value-added services through a global reseller network of over 35,000 web hosts and ISPs. Hover (https://hover.com) makes it easy for individuals and small businesses to manage their domain names and email addresses. More information can be found on Tucows’ corporate website (https://tucows.com).

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