During 1998 and 1999, the first floataway floatation tank was designed by Colin Stanwell-Smith. He also came up with name floataway after an all day brainstorming session. Curiously the first design was conceived as a personal use tank and the name “floathome” was near the top of the list. By word association the final name emerged. The tank itself went through a metamorphosis at the full scale madel stage.
Colin, a UK citizen, is a chartered mechanical engineer and also an award winning designer, responsible for many products for other companies. He always likes to work at full scale, and did so for his first own product. The early models took longer to come to fruition than the logo which Colin also designed from scratch, inventing the serif font and curved keyline on his CAD system. Floataway sold the first tank at the beginning of 2000, a truly millenium product therefore, and that first design is still the best selling product, now found in many countries around the world.
Floataway, as a name, encapsulates the experience of floating in warm salt water, where stress does indeed float away. The logo also floats in a stylised bath with an upward hint of aspiration about the f and t. The implied smile is also a deliberate reference to the smile most floaters have when they finish their sessions!
