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About Naming

Brand Grab: How Yosemite Gave Up Its Name

  Shortly after midnight on March 1 2016, Yosemite National Park was quiet. Tucked in the park’s backcountry, tent campers snored in their sleeping bags. Nocturnal animals emerged from the conifer forests to hunt. But the silence was broken as workers drove from landmark to landmark, tearing down old signs and riveting new ones in…

Dismasted: The Rise and Fall of Mast Brothers Chocolate

The branding efforts of Mast Brothers Chocolate typify the American craft-culture renaissance. We’re told the chocolate bars, ground from premium beans of tropical origin in a small city loft, are the pride and obsession of siblings Rick and Michael Mast. In promotional photos, the brothers pose in front of burlap sacks in their factory, dressed…

Deconstruct: Freeform

Deconstruct is a propaganda venture from A Hundred Monkeys in which we perform close readings of new names belonging to companies with large legal teams. “Freeform … free to take whatever shape feels right, free to push beyond the expected. Free to get from point A to point B in a line that’s nowhere near…

What the Wu Tang Clan Can Teach You About Branding

In 1993, nine New York rappers dropped an album that would go on to… I don’t need to finish it, do I? You know who the Wu Tang Clan is, and if you don’t, you can read one of the many pop-cultural accounts of their rise to stardom, power, and a place in the hip…

On Re-renaming Denali

  • About: Naming

In June of 1896, a gold prospector named William Dickey was digging on the banks of Alaska’s Susitna River. Towering over the river valley was a giant peak, rising over 20,000 feet. While Dickey labored at the foot of the mountain, news arrived that William McKinley had won the Republican presidential nomination. Elated, the prospector…

Naming: It’s What’s for Dinner

If you were to take a walk through a California orchard in 1920 or so, you might come across a tree bearing a large, egg-shaped fruit. The fruit is covered in tough, green skin. Plucked from the tree, it ripens, turning a duller green. You would know it as the alligator pear. The avocado, as…

Deconstruct: 365 by Whole Foods

Deconstruct is a propaganda venture from A Hundred Monkeys in which we perform close readings of new names belonging to companies with large legal teams. Last week, Whole Foods announced the launch of a new chain of grocery stores. Described as “a smaller-store concept where value meets quality,” the new chain is intended as a…

Deconstruct: Microsoft Edge

Introducing Deconstruct, a new propaganda venture from A Hundred Monkeys in which we perform close readings of names belonging to companies with large legal teams. With Edge, Microsoft rolled out a browser that boasts newer, leaner software, replacing the dated Internet Explorer. That’s a good thing, cause the IE name needed to go. Like fellow…

There’s a Word for That

To name is to swim through the deep order of words. It’s our business, and we keep sharp tools at hand to help us get the job done. Part of making sense of language is in classification. Take a form and examine it, then find all its recorded examples. We might take inspiration from a…

Kvlture Clash: Fake Bands and Live Brands

Earlier this year, H&M quietly launched a metal-styled clothing line. The collection, featuring band shirts as well as a diligently patched bomber jacket and jeans combo, would be unremarkable save one thing–none of the bands on the patches are real. Perhaps Corporate didn’t want to pay to license real bands, or maybe designers just needed…