This morning I had emails from Spock and Naymz - both new companies that I am unfamiliar with…
I once worked at a design firm that had a division of writers. Their primary job was to write the content copy for projects and, seemingly much cooler, name stores, books, brands, etc. Surprisingly, their section of the firm was just as visually inspiring as the sections that were dedicated to the designers - graphic, interactive and industrial. The notable difference? They had massive beanie bag chairs (kindergarten style in an adult size - the relationship between comfort and creativity is a close one).
While I could never be a writer, I do still find their role (especially within design firms) very interesting and important. When they did their job well it made ours, as the designers, much easier. Simply put - shaping the brand of a terribly named product or company can be a struggle.
Conversely, start-ups seem to often be named on a whim rather than by writers. Google was partially named for convenience (read more here). Social networks often choose their name using some sort of logic (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) which I would assume is done to gain immediate (and self-explanatory) exposure. The rest of the names fall into a sort of wild card category: Digg, Flickr, Skype, Twitter, Vimeo, etc. Their seemingly trendy (and often very clever) names make sense only with a brief explanation. For this reason, they are usually my favorite…