Specialists vs. one-stop-shops
Why you should bring in a partner for naming
I understand why large creative studios exist. When a client comes around with a long list of deliverables, it would be so nice to simply say, Yes! We can do that. We can do it all.
Even though we could hypothetically scale our team and capabilities, we don’t. And it’s for the best. We have no desire to be big—life is complex enough—we just want to build good relationships so our projects can be as successful as possible. The more we focus on what we’re good at, the more experience we get doing what we love. For everything else, we ask for help from other studios.
In the world of branding, our specialty is naming and we’ve been doing it for decades. We have a lot of experience. Anything that could come up in a naming project has happened at some point during that time. We’ve named companies, products, features, services, apps, colors, the list goes on… We’ve also helped clients simplify vast ecosystems of names to make life easier for, well, anyone who comes in contact with their brand. We spend a vast majority of our working hours thinking about names and naming.
We have answers to all your questions. We know what to look out for, so potential issues are spotted before they become problems. We understand how to balance the creative and strategic aspects of naming with the practical stuff. We talk through all the considerations so nothing is a surprise. At the end of the day, naming is an exercise in a group of people making a subjective decision together. It can be very hard to make progress without a structured process, one that accounts for all the variables, especially the human ones.
We’ve been the same team for ages and we’ve worked with some other creative studios for years. Our design partners bring us in to take the uncertainties of naming off the table. We bring them in to develop the visual identity and make the name look good. The brands we develop in partnership are some of our favorite projects to do. The right clients understand the value of setting up their project this way, because they get an experienced team of specialists who inspire each other to do their best work.
In each of the projects I’ve shared, we worked closely with our design partner throughout every phase. We collaborated on the discovery, allowed each of our respective creative responsibilities to inform the other’s, and had a shared, transparent relationship with the client. The outcome is always a brand we’re proud to showcase, but there’s an added benefit to the client that may be invisible unless you’ve experienced it. It’s the process itself where the real magic happens. When you’re working with people who know their specialties inside and out, with a process that’s tried and true, you get fewer hurdles, unforeseen delays, trademark problems, personnel changes, added expenses, and so on.
tl;dr It’s good to hire specialists because they know how to land the plane.
