defining kuanos
The founders of Kuanos Interactive have been developing professionally for the world wide web since 1998, originally under the name of Capital Line Productions. In 2000, the company came under new management and, along with its focus, decided to change its name and brand. Thus began a three month long process of "soul searching" for what defined the company and how to express those characteristics in a handful of words. The result was kuanos interactive, but here's the story as to how we got there:
When we started out, we had one server, a monster of a thing that burned more electricity than a refrigerator and gave off more ambient sound than a freeway in rushhour. The server, a Netfinity 5500 for those of you in the know, was made by IBM, and in honor of its heritage, we named it "Little Blue" (IBM has traditionally been nicknamed "Big Blue"). When searching for a new name, we spent a good deal of time brainstorming on our whiteboard, and among the recurring themes were integrity, ethics, innovation, creativity, and functionality.
Focusing on those qualities, we narrowed our purpose down to the creation of innovative functionality, and sought to discover how to convey those ideals to our clients and the world. Eventually, our efforts led to the concept of water, which we felt represented a sort of ether of innovation. The next link in the chain came when one of us realized that water is generally associated with the color blue, and that the color blue conveniently ties back to our original IBM server (as in, "Little Blue").
Thus, we began searching for a name that embodied the concept of "blue water", upheld our company values, sounded decent, and - of unfortunate importance - had an available domain name. A few dozen thesauruses later, we came upon the word "kuanos", which in ancient Greek means "dark blue" and is associated with elemental water. From "kuanos" we derive the contemporary word "cyan", which in the realm of graphics and printing refers to the blue hue. As it turned out, "kuanos" had a unique sound to it, the "ku" more reminicent of "qu" (as in "quintessence"); it was (and still is) sparsely found in use on the internet; and of course, the domain name was available.
In the end, our company graphic became a sort of blue gas rather than blue water, but the concept we sought remains well in tact, and the mystery surrounding the curious name is well served by the mystery of what exactly the image on our website depicts.
When we started out, we had one server, a monster of a thing that burned more electricity than a refrigerator and gave off more ambient sound than a freeway in rushhour. The server, a Netfinity 5500 for those of you in the know, was made by IBM, and in honor of its heritage, we named it "Little Blue" (IBM has traditionally been nicknamed "Big Blue"). When searching for a new name, we spent a good deal of time brainstorming on our whiteboard, and among the recurring themes were integrity, ethics, innovation, creativity, and functionality.
Focusing on those qualities, we narrowed our purpose down to the creation of innovative functionality, and sought to discover how to convey those ideals to our clients and the world. Eventually, our efforts led to the concept of water, which we felt represented a sort of ether of innovation. The next link in the chain came when one of us realized that water is generally associated with the color blue, and that the color blue conveniently ties back to our original IBM server (as in, "Little Blue").
Thus, we began searching for a name that embodied the concept of "blue water", upheld our company values, sounded decent, and - of unfortunate importance - had an available domain name. A few dozen thesauruses later, we came upon the word "kuanos", which in ancient Greek means "dark blue" and is associated with elemental water. From "kuanos" we derive the contemporary word "cyan", which in the realm of graphics and printing refers to the blue hue. As it turned out, "kuanos" had a unique sound to it, the "ku" more reminicent of "qu" (as in "quintessence"); it was (and still is) sparsely found in use on the internet; and of course, the domain name was available.
In the end, our company graphic became a sort of blue gas rather than blue water, but the concept we sought remains well in tact, and the mystery surrounding the curious name is well served by the mystery of what exactly the image on our website depicts.