Names are really hard!
When a trademark snag with “TapTo” popped up, we decided in November 2024 to rebrand as Zaparoo! That meant fresh new branding across our products — and a future-proof identity we can truly call our own. Bonus: we’re now locking down our own trademarks, making it easier to grow our open source roots and team up with partners on commercial projects.
Naming our project? Hard. Finding a name we could actually use? Even harder. We first jumped on Taparoo, inspired by our mascot, but a pesky UK trademark (too close to NFC) zapped that plan. No worries — ZAP had all the energy we needed! It’s bold, it’s snappy, and honestly, it’s just way more fun to shout.
The Zaparoo wordmark was the first piece of magic I locked in. I mixed a little cool with a lot of playful, adding bouncy baselines, sharp little peaks, and angles that seem to leap upward — like the whole logo’s ready to take off on an adventure.
This was our chance to craft a bold new icon. TapTo taught us the hard way: logos need to scale, which is why we first came up with those “squircles” for TapTo Life. I fought hard against using a bolt (too obvious for a “ZAP” name), but the moment I sketched it as the kangaroo’s leg, it just clicked. We kept the rainbow colors from TapTo too — a little spark of continuity in a brand-new world.
Over time it got sleeker and more streamlined. The guiding principle was “make it look REALLY fast”.
The new Zaparoo app icon provided a great starting point for supporting the Standard, Dark, and Tint modes of iOS 18.
The new branding charged into everything — from our NFC trading cards to our USB readers and beyond. Thanks to the ZAP name, we got to have some fun too, renaming them the Zap Pad and Zap Pack.
This project was a wild ride: tough, exciting, and so worth it. Most of the community jumped on board right away. TapTo will always have a place in our story, but Zaparoo is where we’re headed next!
