Our New Logo Looks Like a 2003 Scholastic CD-ROM. That's the Point.

We have a new logo.

Before I say anything else: huge thank you to Justin Thompson, a good friend who brought this vision to life. Justin took a loose set of vibes and references and turned them into something that makes me grin every time I see it. If your logo doesn’t make you grin, what’s even the point?

Now, let’s talk about what we ended up with.

Yes, We Know What It Looks Like

This logo absolutely screams late ’90s, early 2000s edutainment software. And we know it.

The chunky rounded type. The high-saturation gradients. The dimensional drop shadows. The magnifying glass tucked into the R like a little easter egg. If you grew up in the era of JumpStart, Reader Rabbit, or ClueFinders, this probably triggers something deep in your brain — a memory of a Scholastic computer lab, a colorful CD in a chunky plastic case, a screen that invited you to click to explore.

That’s not an accident. That’s the whole idea.

Why Not Go Sleek?

Most AI consultancies go the other direction. Clean sans-serif. Monochrome. Maybe a subtle gradient if they’re feeling wild. The visual language says: We are serious. We are enterprise. We are expensive.

And look, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not us.

We’re a two-person consultancy in St. Louis that helps small business owners get their operations out of their heads. Our clients aren’t Fortune 500 companies with innovation budgets. They’re HVAC contractors, accountants, marketing agencies, and solo consultants who are drowning in the stuff they carry around in their brain every day. Pricing, processes, who does what, how things get approved.

The last thing those people need is another company trying to intimidate them with how sophisticated AI is. They need someone who makes it feel approachable. Friendly. Maybe even — dare I say — fun.

The Edutainment Era Got Something Right

Here’s what I think the early 2000s educational software aesthetic actually represents: optimism about technology as a tool for curiosity.

Those programs weren’t trying to impress you. They were trying to get you to click around and discover things. The bright colors and playful icons weren’t dumbing anything down — they were lowering the barrier to entry. Saying: this is for you, come explore, you don’t need to be an expert to start.

That’s exactly the energy we want Moser Research to have.

I wrote a while back about my journey from building Geocities pages as a kid to managing this website with Claude. That post was about how the arc of technology keeps bending back toward the same thing: describe what you want, get a working result. The tools get more powerful, but the fundamental interaction — curiosity in, capability out — stays the same.

This logo captures that. It’s the visual equivalent of “click to explore.” It says discovery, not disruption. It says let’s figure this out together, not hire us because we’re smarter than you.

Personality Over Minimalism

Modern branding tends to flatten everything. Reduce the color count. Remove depth. Simplify until there’s nothing left to remove.

Our logo goes the other direction. Multi-color letters instead of a strict brand palette. Three-dimensional shadows instead of flat vectors. A magnifying glass that’s part of the letterform, not an icon floating in a circle next to a wordmark.

It embraces personality instead of minimalism. And for a consultancy that’s trying to make AI feel human-scale and accessible, that feels right.

What’s Next

The logo is live on the site now — you can see it up in the nav bar. We’ll be rolling it into other places over the coming weeks.

If you’re a small business owner who’s been curious about what AI can actually do for your day-to-day operations — not the hype, not the buzzwords, just the practical stuff — we’d love to talk. We promise the conversation will feel more like exploring a fun program than sitting through an enterprise sales pitch.

Thanks again to Justin Thompson for the design work. And thanks to everyone who’s been following along as we build this thing. We’re just getting started.