Change Is The Only Way Forward

This is long overdue, but here we go.

I changed champ.nyc to Red Halftone for trademarking purposes. I believe if you spend a lot of time creating something and it has value to you, then you should protect it. I was legally advised I wouldn’t have an easy time trademarking “champ.nyc”, or if I did I’d likely be opening a legal can of worms. You know that store called Champ’s Sports that Foot Locker owns? Yeah. So what’s the big deal? Well, if you aren’t familiar with trademarking, you have to choose classes you want your trademark to cover. The class I needed was apparel, and guess who else has a trademark for apparel? Yep, Champ’s. Considering how large of a company they are it wouldn’t be a good fight to pick.

At first, I was pretty pissed. I kind of felt personally attacked because Champ is my real last name, and now I’ve been told I can’t use it. I for sure annoyed the shit out of my lawyer being like: “what if I change a letter”? And every other way around it I could possibly think of. Ultimately, it was a dead-end, and I needed to choose something new. I went with Red Halftone for the obvious reason. If you’re not a graphic designer, the dot pattern that I use is called a halftone.

Not the most exciting story, I know but, I don’t see many creative people talk about this stuff. I think it’s something worth have knowledge about if you do naming, or design logos and brands.

Lastly, the shop is back up — www.redhalftone.nyc. A website redesign is on the to-do list, but dang this month has been over the top busy with client work.