What we’ve learned from building naming architectures At A Hundred Monkeys we have a singular focus for most of our naming projects. We’re naming one company or one product. A smaller subset of our work is focused on naming multiple products that make up a brand’s portfolio. We call this work naming architecture. My colleague
At the end of every year at A Hundred Monkeys our leadership team gets together in Mill Valley, down the street from the old auto repair shop where we first started working together. We reflect on the work we’ve done over the past year and talk about the work we want to do next
It’s fun to talk about bad names. We do so often. Our Creative Director Eli started an instagram hash tag for just that purpose: #dontcallitthat. Eli also documents all the names he comes across in the wild and discusses them on Medium. Round one. Round Two. As a group, all of us at A Hundred
People at Google are Googlers. People at Twitter are Tweeps. People at Amazon are Amazonians. These names feel like they are coming from a place of camaraderie and pride. There’s an element of shared experience. After all, you’re spending 40 (who are we kidding 50+) hours a week with these people. That’s more time than
Our studio is in California where the state motto is Eureka. When it comes to selecting a name, we don’t believe in Eureka. Eureka is a cop out. Not once in my seven years of presenting names to clients has someone exclaimed “Eureka!” or something similar to “Eureka!” like “Yep, that’s the name. For sure….
This is my second post cataloging all of the names I’ve taken pictures of in my life as a professional namer. Every time I run into a name that grabs my attention, I take a picture. Excuse the occasional blur or reflection. I was likely making someone (probably Allie) wait while I doubled-back to grab
This past autumn, I decided to take a look at the startup landscape for our annual Burning Ears event—an exploration of the best and worst in company and product names with the A Hundred Monkeys team. This year we decided to focus our collective energy on specific industries, and I elected to look at startups. In
Good names do not fly out of the aether. Most are found, which requires careful looking. Books are one of the best places to look, so if you’re looking to find great names the more you read the more you’ll be successful at finding hidden gems. I’m always reading one or more works of both
The good, the bad, the incomprehensible Recently at A Hundred Monkeys we had the second annual Burning Ears. A celebration of the best and worst in naming. This year we were all tasked with exploring a particular category of names. I chose something close to my heart — the beautiful game. Finding the names of every
For the second year in a row, the team at A Hundred Monkeys put our heads together for the Burning Ears—our annual look at the best and worst in company and product names. Last year’s Burning Ears was a product of Creative Director, Eli Altman’s naming workbook “Don’t Call it That” and his call to
