dsd164.com / guides / Why "dsd 164"

A name that means nothing, on purpose

Every company name is a bet on where you want to be understood. An English name reads well in London and Los Angeles, but lands differently in Tokyo, Riyadh or Rio. When the company behind Snake '97 needed a name in 2012, it made the opposite bet: pick something that means nothing anywhere, so it means the same thing everywhere.

It is the front door

"dsd 164" is the address of the headquarters in Amsterdam: Dalsteindreef 164. No mission statement, no invented word, no focus group: just the place where the work happens, compressed to three lowercase letters and a number. Always lowercase, by the way. It is "dsd 164", never "DSD".

Set in road-sign type

The logo takes the address nod one step further: it is set in the official ANWB typeface used on Dutch street and motorway signs. The name points at a street, so the lettering is street lettering. And if you look very closely at the logo's blue, #004FA4: the last number in it is 164. The signage look now runs through this whole site, from the blue panels to the hectometre posts on the timeline.

Does it work?

Forty million downloads across every continent suggest it does. A meaningless name never mispronounces, never mistranslates and never goes out of fashion: it just points home.

dsd 164 has been shipping from Amsterdam since 2010. For ideas and collaborations: let's talk.

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