Shortly after the Kickstarter for the BRCK ended in early June, the team got together and started to dig deeper into the brand that is the BRCK.
The BRCK is a rugged connectivity device that was designed to meet the demanding challenges of life and work in Africa. In places where electricity is intermittent and the internet is spotty, keeping pace with the rest of the world can be challenging. The BRCK was designed to alleviate these issues by delivering both a redundant data connection and a reliable power source to ensure that nothing gets in the way of staying online.
The BRCK was also designed to be an always-available onramp for the Internet of Things. With a completely accessible and programmable AVR micro-controller, the BRCK provides the interfaces and tools needed for connecting any sensor or system to the rest of the world. Using the industry standard Arduino framework, the BRCK can be programmed and updated directly from the Cloud. Through the power of the BRCK’s connectivity stack, remote sensors can now interact seamlessly with logic in any system, anywhere to completely blur the lines between hardware and software.
In light of all of these things, we bring you the new look for BRCK. The changes reflect an effort to communicate better the goals and values we've always had for BRCK. Rugged, Reliable, Innovative, Accessible.
Changing the Logo
The initial logo was created after we built out the single button interface. The colors that the button glows (green and blue) indicate different messages about your BRCK being on primary or backup power or internet, so we incorporated that into our initial logo.
At the end of the day, we decided we liked the shape and mark of the button, plus the type font chosen for the logo. However, we wanted to move away from the colors blue and green as the identifying colors of the brand. We ended up at black and a deep yellow, as we think the industrial connotations fit well with our thoughts around rugged use and enterprise-grade hardware and software.
We have come to feel that BRCK's existence is a herald for a sea change in the way the world experiences the internet. We can clearly see internet access arriving in the final miles of the world. We see the Internet of Things becoming commonplace and integral to our daily lives. We at Ushahidi and the BRCK team are excited.