What's in a name?

In the beginning was the word; and the word was Jeepers Creepers.

When I arrived in Second Life in November '05, I spent most of my time in the sandboxes, learning how to build. I've always considered myself an artisan rather than an artist, and SL provided a place where I could build anything I could imagine. Every now and then I would venture out into the world and find a camping chair to earn some money for clothes and especially shoes. Although my first AV was female, I quickly realized that it was the shortage of good men's shoes that would provide the inspiration for my first commercial venture.

The first shoe I built to sell, was a black crepe-soled creeper. It has a simple design that offered plenty of opportunity for variations: different colors, buckles, laces, faux-fur tops, emblems on the toe and heel, etc. The obvious name for the shoe appeared out of nowhere: Jeepers Creepers. That name appeared first as a logo on the label inside the shoe (which is why there is a row of stitches around the perimeter), and also on the lid of the shoebox. That selfsame Jeepers Creepers logo also appeared above my first and all my subsequent stores, up until today, when my store logo became the far more prosaic JCS, Jeepers Creepers Shoes, with the separate Men's Store version shown below.

I'm glad that I've finally made the change. There was some confusion, at least in my mind, that Jeepers Creepers was both the name of my store and the name of one of the many brands of shoes that I sell. Also, I always felt that the original logo was somewhat cartoonish, and while that was not inappropriate for the shoes it adorned, when it appeared above my store, as the name of my store, it did not reflect the quality and variety of the shoes I make.

For anyone who's interested, I chose Bookman Old Style as the font for the JCS, because it has a shapely clean look and a very strong J. In homage to my original Jeepers Creepers logo, I chose yellow as the font color (although in a richer and less garish shade), and a modest bevel and emboss to lift the letters off the black background. Initially there was slightly too much space between the J and the C, so I switched the letter spacing from the default Metric to Optical. The other font is the honest Arial. I kept the same enhancements for the MEN's, but for the Jeepers Creepers Shoes, I chose instead an Inner Shadow which has the effect of making the letters appear to be incised from the background, reflecting their diminished importance.