The Beatles, Apple, Virgin – what do you see? Insect, fruit or someone called Mary?
No. These iconic brand names occupy space of their own, inside our minds, taking on form of their own and have meaning embedded into them over time. So a beatle can become John, Paul, George or Ringo, an apple becomes the digital age cool kid and the virgin is in fact a bearded entrepreneur.
So why at Ascender do we value naming as a key component in delivering compelling, desirable brands?
For Ascender, intelligent graphic design is a harmonious marriage between words and images – language and the delivery of language. To be compelling, the name of a business must be the central anchor for delivering the brand essence — a promise expressed in the simplest terms.
So when we were asked to define a name for a new financial group with a fresh approach to financial planning and tier one investment, we knew where to start.
Our brainstorms combine divergent and convergent thinking – we are not so rigid in our naming methodology as not to get formulaic outcomes but we do have a few principles. Firstly, we develop a culture in our brainstorms; we make it fun and open, we include as many people as possible to cast a wide range of ideas, and the name must be memorable, unique to the category and true to the business. Our task is to ensure that the name satisfies agreed criteria so that when we evaluate the options we can be objective. Does it have a balance of letterforms? Is it easy to say on the phone? Is it dot-comable? After developing a shortlist of names from themes such as fresh, optimism, and aspiration we arrived at ‘Spring’ - a short and punchy name that reflected the brand essence — to ‘release, source and grow’. By combining the name with a neat interpretation of the identity and robust brand architecture we were able to empower the business with confidence, trust and a little desire. Other names by Ascender include Longrain Restaurant and Bar, Activate Business Growth, WhiteRabbit Research and Consulting.
2012 Ascender