Happy Lunar New Year!
When we introduced Document GPS we knew we needed a way to show users that this was just like the way they had always been doing things, only more secure and with more control over the process. Users needed to see in one glance they could always follow the journey of an attachment and also be in charge of who else could access the file at any point in the future.
And thus our red-orange paperclip was born.
First we started by merging the image of a standard paperclip with the idea of a map pinpoint. Right away it indicates the feature of Document GPS which shows senders a history of each time someone opens, downloads or shares their files.
Then it was a question of what color the icon should be. It had to stand out and it had to convey a sense of security. It just so happened that this process started taking place right after Lunar New Year in preparation for a launch that would happen around the time of Golden Week, another major holiday in Asia. Since not only is our co-founder originally from China but our first expansion outside the U.S. was in Japan, it felt like a perfect symbiosis to keep in mind as we developed the design.
For both holidays the colors of red are abundant along with the wishes for luck and prosperity to friends and family. When we dug into the meaning of different colors, we learned the ancient meaning from Japanese culture for the color red (or “aka”) was often used in temples to scare away evil spirits and was often associated with peace and prosperity. Even more fitting, in Kabuki theater the symbolism of red on the actors’ faces is meant to represent justice. With our vision of creating a safer #web3 world that protects people from unwanted access to their files, plus our DocuWalk solution that gives people a way to virtually negotiate a contract in a secure environment, the history of “aka” captured the vision guiding everything we have built to date.
But it needed a little something more.
Attachments inside Document GPS are essentially protected in a secure digital lockbox that you have the keys to, so our paperclip needed to emphasize the #blockchain security behind the technology.
Enter the color gold.
As soon as we added an overlay of shimmering gold to the red it popped off the screen and gave off a hint of padlocks and safety deposit boxes and the doors to a bank vault. Plus a touch of golden luck, which is why it is no surprise we quickly gained over 500 downloads in the early weeks of the launch and surpassed well over a thousand downloads soon after that, putting us in the top 20% of new extensions in the Chrome store within a month of going live.
It was our ShelterZoom mission captured in one simple button and it worked.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/document-gps/gdlobabjmjnkkiajibjhembfpgpenbep/related
