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About Naming
The Burning Ears 2018
- About: Naming
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…
Realer than Fiction
- About: Naming
Companies and products that leapt off the screen. There’s one way to launch a brand that gives people unprecedented abilities to control public perception, make their brand feel real before it actually exists, fine tune their brand story, and have their audience’s undivided attention. It’s called fiction. Many brands have benefitted from having their name,…
Festivus for the rest of us
- About: Naming
There are more musical festivals today than you can shake a drumstick at. Most of them have names that are a total bore compared to what’s happening on stage, but the names listed here make us want the festival merch even if we don’t have a ticket. . . . When it comes to live events,…
You’ve got the whole world in your brand
- About: Naming
A name ≠ a brand. Selecting a name is hard. It’s hard to get two, or four, or seven people to agree on any one thing, especially if that thing is a name. It’s hard because the name needs to work creatively and strategically — but it also needs to work legally. Seeking trademark protection…
Some of your associations with names are ridiculous
- About: Naming
We all have personal associations with names, so which ones really matter? Words take us to weird places What comes to mind when you hear the word “heatwave”? You might think of slow radiating waves of energy rolling across an electric blue sky, those lasers that come out of the Flash’s eyes, a microwave, The…
Someone Will Pronounce Your Name Wrong. And that’s fine.
- About: Naming
Seriously. Mispronunciation of your name isn’t the worst thing that could happen to your company, it’s not even close. Like most people, you’re probably thinking about your brand or product as some singular, perfect project – and that makes sense, you’ve been working on it for years. No matter the amount of effort you’ve put…
Oops, it’s perfect
- About: Naming
Brands are just like humans. Because we, as humans, have not evolved mental structures for dealing with brands in any other way. Brands communicate to you constantly, the same way other animals communicate to you, chiefly other humans. So we use that same part of the brain and those same mental tools we use for…
Run Studio Run featured in Grain Edit
- About: Naming
Eli’s latest book Run Studio Run has been featured in Grain Edit, the modern graphic design inspiration blog. https://www.grainedit.com/2017/12/19/run-studio-run/
Run Studio Run
- About: Naming
Creative people are not business people, huh? Creative Director, Eli Altman says otherwise in his new book, Run Studio Run. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1246751326/run-studio-run-the-business-of-running-a-creative
The Burning Ears 2017
- About: Naming
If you arrived at this page you probably already know that we think about names a lot. We can’t help it. We’re passionate about naming. So it’s no wonder that when we come across “curious” or “odd” names in the wild we can’t help but take note. It was only a matter of time before…