Good question!

When I decided to start my own design company I knew I didn’t want to use my actual name as my business name as it’s not the most exciting thing in the world! I also needed to make sure I chose a name that didn’t already exist, was unique, easy to spell and memorable.

So – deep brainstorming started (with the help of some friends and a trip to the British Museum for inspiration). A few unhelpful suggestions from friends were disregarded (‘spazzacom’, mega-globo-hyper-design-company’ etc)

I love mythology so started to think about colour within the mythological world and somehow arrived at ‘Iris’- the greek goddess of the rainbow and messenger of the gods.

Seeing as graphic design is translating a clients message to their viewer I thought this was perfect. The goddess Iris also travels at the speed of the wind, which I also thought worked well to display the speed in which I can turn jobs around efficiently.

The iris (coloured part) of the eye is named after Iris (as eyes come in many different colours, like the rainbow). When your pupil dilates to let in more light (or information) I realised that the coloured part of your eye becomes smaller and looks darker – so Dark Iris was born.

Simple name – complicated reasons!