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About Branding

State of the industry: Spring 2026 edition

One of the joys of this role is getting a glimpse into a whole slew of industries and wearing a different hat every week. One week we’re learning about the nuances of LLM context windows and the future of AGI, and the next week we’re channeling our inner tweens for potato chip inspiration. This kind…

Brand archetypes and where they come from

A lot of branding people like to employ archetypes as a way to model and build brands. Nike is often referred to as a “Warrior” brand. Harley Davidson is an “Outlaw” brand. So what are brand archetypes? Where did they come from? Most importantly–are they useful?  What are archetypes? Archetypes are models or symbols. Hercules…

Branding in late stage capitalism

Branding is supposed to represent what a company believes in and how they see the world. It’s a series of signals to customers and potential customers showing what’s valued. But most brands have competing interests. If a brand isn’t making money, it probably isn’t going to be a brand for too much longer. So while…

Hypefeast: Safe names are bland

For the brave souls who have decided to launch a consumer packaged goods brand in the past few years, brand naming was likely as important as their proprietary blend of herbs and spices. In the increasingly diverse and thoughtfully branded consumer goods world, standouts no longer whisper. They leap off the shelf, label forward, with…

Introduction to Poetry (And Naming)

In 1988 poet Billy Collins wrote Introduction to Poetry which was included in his collection of poems titled The Apple that Astonished Paris. It goes: I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a…

The name you want is taken. Here’s why that’s a good thing.

Let’s say you’re founding an AI company or launching an AI product. You’re going to change how people work, think, and create. And you know exactly what you want for your name: “short, memorable, punchy.” Ideally a real word. “Think Apple,” you say. “Think Stripe.” I get it. I really do. I’ve lived versions of…

Why is it so hard to hype AI at launch?

Credentialed crowds. Cinematic intros. Surprise celebrity cameos. Awkward live demos. By now we all know the hallmarks of a major tech launch event, like the “Made by Google” hardware showcase, the Meta Connect developer conference, Apple’s annual iPhone release, or Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked. As namers with one foot in the tech industry, we treat these…

Branding for the Head and the Heart: An Interview with Made of Millions’ Esther Fernandez

Passion projects are a hot topic around here. We often daydream about which companies or products we would be enthusiastic to name from minor league sports teams to hammocks. Even though we mostly concern ourselves with working with kind and communicative folk, we all individually hope that our one dream project comes in the door….

What your merch says about you

In this role, few things are quite as satisfying as seeing a newly-launched name in the physical world—whether that’s on product packaging, a billboard, or a business card. Suddenly the intangible has become tangible, part of an environment where it can be observed, manipulated, and, hopefully, remembered. After recently being asked to evaluate names based…

What happens when every brand on the shelf is designed to be different?

That’s the question raised by Pop Up Grocer, a curated retail experience in NYC described as “all the buzziest brands on Instagram under one roof” and “playland for packaging nerds.” It also asks, what if the inside of your pantry was edited by Dieline?  Sandwiched between Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and SoHo neighborhoods, Pop Up Grocer…

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