Being a professional namer of companies and products affects how people interact with you at social gatherings and holiday parties. New acquaintances might question “how it all works” or ask if I “went to school for that,” and tend to be enthusiastic to know more—especially if they have a new project or side hustle in
At A Hundred Monkeys we do our fair share of renaming projects. This year, 42% of our naming projects have been finding new names for products or companies that already have publicized names. Not only is renaming somewhat common, it happens for different reasons. Some companies are legally forced to change their names while others
This weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Island Pacific Supermarket in Vallejo, California. For the uninitiated, the Island Pacific Supermarket in Vallejo is a supermarket featuring foods from the Philippines. I entered the store looking for snacks as I had spent most of the day performing manual labor and was wanting to snack
6 July 2020 Update: Go Name Yourself has arrived! You can pick up your deck here. When I wrote Don’t Call It That, the goal was to walk people through a naming process start-to-finish. It was an experiment. I had named hundreds of businesses and products but I had never written a guide for people to do
This spring I traveled to Mexico to take in the sights, sounds, and names of La Ciudad de los Palacios and the Oaxaca Coast. I found the names of shops, restaurants, bakeries, products, and even creative agencies were at times nuanced, mirthful, and clever — and other times mucho menos. « Romance de la lengua extranjera » Some of
How to look at your studio critically, as a business When I first became Creative Director at A Hundred Monkeys, I had no idea what I was doing. I felt confident in my creative abilities but I had zero experience managing people or a business. Motivated primarily by a fear of failure, I did everything
A case for brand names that wallow with us. As consumers, we’re inundated with positive messages for products meant to make our lives better. This tastes good. This makes you more appealing to others. This makes your kids happy. This makes you happy because it’s cheaper than the other thing. Alongside this positivity comes a
If I’m being honest, I’ve never really worked that hard. I never pulled an all-nighter at school. I’ve never stayed at work until midnight editing a presentation. I used to feel bad about this — if I really cared about my work why am I not giving everything to it? I kept hearing people talk
Thoughts on Client Enthusiasm I lead about 25 naming projects every year and I’ve noticed a common characteristic that is a solid indicator for how fruitful a specific creative relationship will be: passion. To put it simply, do you care about what you’re doing and do you get others excited about it? Further, for naming
We live in a noisy world, and it’s not just noisy for our ears, it’s noisy for our eyes and our minds too. Modern communication has allowed us near-unlimited access to all our loved ones and acquaintances. It’s also made for a vast sea of content and managing all of this noise can be taxing
