We started our Facebook page a couple of years back, when Facebook was still relatively new. At the time, I did not really understand much about what Facebook was, but I understood that it was getting big fast and that Mezuzah Store should probably have a presence there.
When setting up the page, I needed a profile picture. Back then, Facebook only allowed a very small profile image, so I took a detail from one of our mezuzah cases and cropped it. It was bright and colorful, and in that tiny format, it worked.
Today, I was looking at our page and thinking it was time for something new. I thought it would be funny to play off the Facebook color scheme while still making the image feel connected to mezuzahs. Here is what I came up with:
I put it up on the page this morning to see what people thought. The response was very clear: people did not like it.
One person said the little “f” looked like a cross. Several people said it looked like a tombstone. It was pretty funny because once they said it, I could see exactly what they meant, but it honestly never occurred to me. I grew up in California, where there are no tall tombstones in many cemeteries, and now I live in Israel, where tombstones are usually rectangular. Also, a lot of the older doors here are arched.
To me, it was obviously supposed to be a doorway, with the little “f” in the place of a mezuzah. But I guess when you live in America and it is only two months before Halloween, it brings a very different image to mind.
So I changed it a bit and came up with this:
But in the end, the clear consensus was that people liked the old one better. So I played around with it in Photoshop to make it larger and brighter. Here is the final version we went back to:
Looking back, it makes sense. The Shin (ש) is one of the most familiar symbols on a mezuzah. It is connected to Shaddai (שַׁדַּי), one of the Divine Names traditionally associated with the mezuzah, so the original image had a stronger Jewish feeling than the more obvious Facebook-style designs.
Thanks to the customers and Facebook friends who helped me see the light. Sometimes the first idea really is the best one.
What do you think?
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