Shake that mold..

The great ‘China wave’ of investment in numerical domains, and the crazy sums of money passing hands for these assets, is even among more senior domain investors more or less just distant memory. (Did that really happen or it was a only dream?! Someone paid that for THAT!??)

But choosing a digit as your brand can still be a savvy option, visually cutting you away from the crowd in timeless fashion.

This is because, most users will spend their day navigating from one alpha (lettered) domain to the next, at least outside of East Asia.

But then they hit upon 350.io..

The routine pattern is disrupted and the domain stands out, meaning that engagement and impactful messaging is already taking place.

Which, from a branding perspective, is surely the first purpose of a domain!

Numbers in East Asian cultures

Numeric domains are also quite common in places like China and Japan, where companies are generally associated with an assigned number.

For example, trade Sony Corporation or Toyota Motor Corporation on the New York Stock Exchange and you’ll use the tickers SONY and TM. But execute the same trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and you’ll need to use the tickers 6758 and 7203.

It may seem a little bewildering to those from beyond the region, but the centrality of numbers has been woven into East Asian life. And play a greater role in day to day life, as brands and otherwise.

The ‘average’ person from that part of the world may thus be far more used to carrying numbers in their head than their Western counterpart. And in the internet age, the expression of this has continued unabated.

Universality of numbers/brand

The power of numbers is of course not limited to East Asian cultures but applies universally. So your branded numeric domain will not needed to ‘converted’ along the way — by means of a translation, an IDN, or otherwise.

What’s more, with the default language of the internet having over 1 million words (and counting!), a Chinese user may have little previous experience with an English word which a Westerner will instantly recognize as being in the dictionary.

Or worse still, a pun or typo of that word, which may stand little chance of translating. But a three of four-number domain (NNN or NNNN) in a very common extension? Well, that may just be an easier homespace to remember!

With dictionary word domains trading for top dollar, choosing a superclean numeric over a more osbcure word that could potentially confuse users from outside the Anglosphere also makes a great deal of sense.

Extras: Logo set. I Ching gaming tips.

Touchwords:Buoyant. Brave. Boundless.

Offsetting potential drawbacks

Numeric domains are not to everyone’s tastes, and if you do feel it’s a little risky as a brand, you can help offset this by choosing a number that is visually appealing, memorable and meaningful in its own right.

That way you can enact something of a branding hedge bet. You get to appeal to those markets where numerics are a common site but don’t risk pushing users from other markets too far out of their comfort zone.

350.io hits the target on each of these fronts.

It’s a nice round number, and lends itself to all styles of great logo. You could run with something along the lines of the logo depicted here, or, for example, with the ‘3’ and the ‘5’ standing back-to-back, their curves highlighted by those of the ‘0’ (its cuddly curves in turn resonated by the light and curly finish of the ‘o’ in ‘.io’).

Going deeper into Eastern numerology, the sum total of the number 350 is 8: the luckiest, eternal number. Within this system, 350 is considered an ‘angel number’, with the owning company said to manifest creative and material worth, while displaying a sense of freedom and infinite potential. Just saying!