I’m doing a lot of naming work for clients. Naming work is positioning work. It takes imagination, patience, purpose, persistence, resilience and not a little toil and tears. In other words, it all takes time. But there has to be some humour in the mix somewhere. Not just for some light relief – it adds some flexibility to the often abstract, fibreglass rigidity of many corporate product, service and company names emerging today. I’m always happy to go back to the late 70s for my inspiration. Half the reason punk music caught on was the memorable playground names of the main players. You felt strangely familiar with Poly Styrene, Sid Vicious and Captain Sensible. You realised it had all gone too far with Ivor Biggun, Tenpole Tudor and Jilted John. Yet, when a record label was called Stiff Records or Step Forward, it somehow connected more than Atlantic or EMI. And there were lots of lesser lights and labels you were aware of. These I carry around in my time machine of a mind. There was Gaye Advert. And there was Epic Soundtracks. Sounding like a label himself, Epic was born Kevin Godfrey, he formed an eccentric band called Swell Maps with his brother, Adrian, who went out under the moniker, Nikki Sudden. Both are now no longer with us. Epic Soundtracks would have been 50 today. As I persist with my naming manoeuvres, I'll make sure his name lives on.
Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/
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