The Names of MIT Media Lab: How to Describe an Innovation

There is nothing else quite like MIT Media Lab. Their mission to “invent a better future” has given us a better present. It’s Media Lab’s research and development that led to the Kindle and Nook, Rock Band and One Laptop Per Child.

While their innovative projects receive and deserve recognition, MIT Media Lab’s innovative project naming also warrants study and praise. The minds of the Media Lab seem to know as much about how to innovate as how to name innovations. 

In Describe Different, I wrote that it’s rarely easy to develop an obvious description for a product hitherto not obvious. The best practice of creating descriptors for innovations requires using words people are familiar with, but combining them in an original way. In a sense, it’s the very essence of creativity itself: combining old things in new ways.

What’s an innovative product descriptor? As an example, a new camera launched last year called the Lytro light field camera. In this case, light field camera is the innovation’s descriptor. Here’s a brief post about my work naming the Lytro. 

When it comes to naming new — really new — products, we can learn a lot from MIT Media Labs. Here are some instructive examples:

Liberated Pixels

“...Systems that blur the boundary between urban lighting and digital displays in public spaces. These systems consist of liberated pixels, which are not confined to rigid frames as are typical urban screens. Liberated pixels can be applied to existing horizontal and vertical surfaces in any configuration, and communicate with each other to enable a different repertoire of lighting and display patterns. We have developed Urban Pixels a wireless infrastructure for liberated pixels.”

Wonderfully original yet self-explanatory, liberated pixels isn’t just a name, it’s a frame. It implies that other pixels are not liberated but are “an oppressed population” confined to the limited dimensions of a screen. Pixels is meant loosely, a metaphor for any point of light that could be illuminated at will in the future photopia the researchers envision. Liberated pixels demonstrates that a name can be distantly metaphoric — literally speaking, the light is neither liberated nor pixels — yet proximate enough to be descriptive. Bonus points for extending the pixels theme with urban pixels to describe the enabling infrastructure.  

Air Mobs

“Air Mobs is a community-based P2P cross-operator WiFi tethering market.” 

Air refers to wi-fi — a creative yet familiar application of the word (cf. Apple’s AirPort and AirPlay). Mobs refers to groups of people, here communities and markets. Although mobs can be threatening and unruly, when used in a name, mobs casts off its dark sheen and becomes a playful label for a boisterous crowd. You can read more about the “positivity principle” — the phenomenon that negative words are perceived positively when they appear in a name — in the article, Red Flags and Red Herrings.  

Storied Navigation

”Storied Navigation is a novel approach to constructing a story based on a collection of digital video and audio. Media sequences are tagged with free-text annotations and stored as a collection. The system can then suggest media based on the context of the story.”

Storied Navigation is a new kind of storytelling named anew. The name’s focus is on the process of navigation (i.e. laying out a plot based on photos and videos) and bringing stories (i.e. annotations) into that process. The name belies the project’s reason for being: Until now, media-based stories have been piecemeal, a patchwork of disparate and disjointed moments that do not tie together into a seamless narrative. With Storied Navigation, a journey through media artifacts is no longer staccato, aimless wandering, but coherent and unified by a purpose: a story. In a fun twist, the word “storied” is not used as it is typically meant (legendary), but more literally yet novelly used to mean imbued with stories.

Hyperinstruments

“...the goal of designing expanded musical instruments, using technology to give extra power and finesse to virtuosic performers. Such hyperinstruments were designed to augment guitars and keyboards, percussion and strings, and even conducting....The research focus of all this work is on designing computer systems (sensors, signal processing, and software) that measure and interpret human expression and feeling, as well as on exploring the appropriate modalities and innovative content of interactive art and entertainment environments. We have also expanded the hyperinstrument environment to include gestural and intuitive control of visual media.”

 

Hyperinstruments is a successful coined descriptor, denoting musical instruments that are beyond in some way. Hyper- brings many useful meanings: over, above, beyond, exceeding. All are relevant. This descriptor demonstrates that by taking a word that is functionally grounded, it can be augmented with a prefix to shape its meaning. Such a technique could be applied to the same root to derive non-existent neologisms (and innovations) such as meta-instruments (instruments that work beyond the instruments themselves), nano-instruments (the world’s smallest violin), mega-instruments (what Christo would play), auto-instruments (self-playing instruments, like player pianos and computers), bio-instruments (the body as music maker), and hydro-instruments (those whose sound comes from water).

Robotic Textiles

Cool!

Cornucopia: Digital Gastronomy

“In essence, it is a 3D printer for food.”

A few noteworthy things on this one. First, they could have called this 3D Food Printer, but they didn’t, at least not in the project description. I hope that in describing a device, it is called the 3D Food Printer because it’s bang-on. Second, Digital Gastronomy is the perfect description of the practice or art of creating food using digital technology. Computer-generated cake art would fall under Digital Gastronomy, as would the 3D Food Printer. Finally, there’s a coy proper name in Cornucopia. It suggests not only abundance, but also CORN!

EyeRing: A Compact, Intelligent Vision System on a Ring

“EyeRing is a wearable intuitive interface that allows a person to point at an object to see or hear more information about it.”

EyeRing is a solid, descriptive name. I like that it’s an analog to earring, which is not a ring that hears (though: cool) but one you put on your ears. EyeRing is not the only descriptor that might have been for this project: Information Ring, Vision Ring, Digital Ring, Sense Ring, and Ring of Knowledge would be equally descriptive, albeit longer. 

Watt Watcher

“Watt Watcher is a project that provides in-place feedback on aggregate energy use per device in a format that is easy to understand and intuitively compare.”

Clarity and alliteration: Two points!

Audio Spotlight

“Audio spotlight can target sound very specifically.”

Great innovative descriptors often borrow from established terms in other categories. A spotlight is a beam of light that is narrowly focused. The Audio Spotlight is a beam of sound narrowly focused. Thankfully, whoever coined this didn’t try to rid the name of light by calling it a Spotsound or some such. Smartly, they knew people would give the name latitude and not be confused by the presence of the word light. Today, we rent movies from iTunes, and don’t think twice even though the name suggests music and not video. 

Singing Fingers

“Singing Fingers allows children to fingerpaint with sound.”

Descriptors don’t have to be boring or rigidly literal. A descriptor like Sonic Fingerpainting would get the job done, but why choose that when you could have Singing Fingers? Singing is understood to mean creating sound, so it fits the bill poetically.  

In the spirit of balance and eschewing unadulterated adulation, I will mention two names that might be a bit off the mark:  

Ambient Furniture

“Prototype furniture concepts that mix ‘apps with the IKEA catalog’ to explore ideas on peripheral awareness, incidental gestures, pre-attentive processing, and eavesdropping interfaces when embedded into our everyday objects.”

A beautiful name, no? Attach ambient to anything and it sounds more beautiful. Ambient contusion. Ambient putrefaction. Ambient booger. See?! Ambient furniture is somewhat misdescriptive, as it’s not furniture that’s ambient but software applications. Ambient apps would be more accurate, but who’s gonna quibble when you have the audacious euphony of Ambient Furniture?   

MIT Media Lab

“The Media Lab is a place where the future is lived, not imagined. Our domain is applying unorthodox research approaches for envisioning the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life. Unconstrained by traditional disciplines, Lab designers, engineers, artists, and scientists work atelier-style, conducting more than 350 projects that range from neuroengineering, to how children learn, to a stackable, electric car for tomorrow’s city.”

With caution and humility, I gently submit that the MIT Media Lab name itself is one of their lesser descriptive name achievements. To its credit, media is a big, broad word and  covers a lot of things: computers, the arts, and scads of other relevant disciplines. But the organization’s groundbreaking work in electric cars, advanced prostheses, social signals in biomedicine, and nanowires push the meaning of media beyond what’s been established. The MIT Media Lab name does not do justice to the scope of the organization: Creating a better future. I would not deign to suggest MIT Media Lab change its venerable name, just as Microsoft shouldn’t change its name just because it sells keyboards and mice, I am merely noting the irony of a reigning name that might fall a bit short of its subjects. 

If you ever have the opportunity to describe something that’s never been described before, I hope these examples from MIT Media Lab inspire you describe greatly.

Fibblestax: A Naming Storybook

Have you heard about the boy who names everything?

His name is Fibblestax. It’s him we have to thank for words like mother, whisper, crackers and rain.

You probably thought these elemental English words had no single inventor. I certainly did. But author Devin Scillian reveals the truth about where names really come from in his delightful children’s book, Fibblestax.

I was first introduced to Fibblestax through Hugh Levaux, a client for whom I named the clinical trial research company, Bracket. In our second meeting, Hugh told me what he recently told his five-year-old daughter, “You know who I met today? Fibblestax.”

I looked at Hugh quizzically, quickly blinking the way one does when confused or lost in conversation.

“Uh...who’s Fibblestax?” I asked.

Hugh was stunned. “You don’t know Fibblestax?! He’s the boy who names everything!”

Go ooooon!

After our meeting, I ran home (on BART) and found Fibblestax on Amazon. With an inkling that this book about the boy who named everything would be important to me, I sought and bought a first edition signed by the author, Devin Scillian. (At the time, I thought that I’d like to talk with the author someday. Months later I did, and our conversation will be featured in a future blog post.)

Like Navin Johnson when the new phonebook arrived, I greeted the delivery of Fibblestax at my door with loud outbursts of joy.

Fibblestax is here! Fibblestax is here!

Fibblestax is beautifully illustrated by calligrapher Kathryn Darnell. Adorning the covers and every page between, her rustic pencil illustrations are richly textured. The endpaper features a selection of words writ large and small in varying styles of calligraphy. They are words for which we have Fibblestax to thank: daffodil, armadillo, hatchet, rutabaga, jug.

Kathryn Darnell illustrates why calligraphy means beautiful writing.

Fibblestax is not just about Fibblestax. The story tells us of the proto-namer who preceded Fibblestax:

His name was Carr, a red-faced man
who sat on a hickory trunk, 

And gave terrible names to wonderful things
like toad and snake and skunk. 

He thought up all the awful words
in a careless, haughty way, 

Words like sphere and xylophone
and others I can’t say.

Carr, with a face befitting his names.

Fibblestax: A boy and his names.

Fibblestax spent his time considering the names Carr invented and dreaming up better ones. Fibblestax was named by Carr, so it’s understandable he would want to outsmart the one responsible for his own awkward moniker.

Fibblestax taunted Carr ever-sweetly with names better than the ones Carr dredged up:

This gloobywickus in my cup
why it looks like cream.…
And I much prefer the sound of flowers
to the sound of gunnywunks.

Taking offense, Carr challenged Fibblestax to a naming contest. An announcement was issued to the community:

The things we say,
the trinkets of our tongue.
Shall it be Carr the elder
or Fibblestax the young? 

By order of the mayor,
come this very day
and weigh these worthy wordsmiths
come without delay.

In this epic naming battle for the ages, the mayor would describe a thing that needed a name, and Fibblestax and Carr would each name it, then the people would judge. Fibblestax happened to come up with the very words we use today for those things. In all fairness, the deck was stacked against Carr. [Hey, Devin, how about a sequel from the perspective of Carr, a la Grendel?]

Fibblestax vs. Carr: War of the Words

As a namer, I appreciated the inventiveness of Carr’s ugly words. Quoting Mr. Scillian from our soon-to-be-published interview, “The words had to be wrong in just the right way.”

Consider for yourself the names invented by each: Carr came up with droog, where Fibblestax came up with rain. And Carr called poonies what the boy called crackers (“for that’s how crackers sound”).

The last word Carr could not name, for it described a feeling Carr never felt:

This is that feeling, that very strange feeling,
a dreamy kind of cheer.
That feeling that makes you feel so good
when a special friend is near.

Fibblestax knew what to call that feeling. He called it love.

The judges swooned. Fibblestax was victorious. At the celebration, there was lots of hugging and crying and singing into the night. I’d wager Fibblestax invented the word kumbaya at some point.

This is love.

The story closes with a conversation between the author and Fibblestax, suggesting the boy give himself a better name:

“Oh no,” he says, “I’ll not do that.
It’s a little reminder for me
To always find the perfect name
for all the things I see.
And yet,” he says, “it’s what’s inside.
A name sometimes distracts.
For everyone’s a special soul.
Even one named Fibblestax.” 

The book about the boy who names everything admits to the limits of names. It’s true, names can’t do everything. A great product can succeed despite a lousy name, and a great name won’t salvage a lousy product.

But names are not nothing, either. They do matter. Every time you think of a thing, you think of its name. Every time you talk about a thing, you speak its name. I, for one, would much rather have wonderful words echoing in my thoughts and speech instead of ugly ones. Wouldn’t you?

Thank you, Devin, for introducing us to the quintessential namer, Fibblestax. And thank you, Fibblestax, for your wonderful names.

Readers, stay tuned. My interview with author Devin Scillian will be posted soon!

I Hate Ugly Words: My Interview on Wordnik

Wordnik is a place where people post lists of words. Many an hour I've spent scouring Wordnik lists as I develop brand names for clients. My most recent post about naming interactive storybook company, Wanderful, includes links to actual Wordnik searches I used for that project.

I like Wordnik and, judging by their kind offer to interview me, they like me back.

The interview covers my childhood-era obsession with Proto-Indo-European roots, the process I recommend to develop a brand name, helpful online naming resources, and a cool technique that uses multiple resources to quickly develop scads of great names.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

Wanderful: The Story Behind the Name

“Mickey Mantle needs a new name.”

That’s how I first heard about the assignment, when a colleague told me about his client named Mickey Mantle and his yet-unnamed interactive children’s book company.

To name a publisher, imprint an imprint, title a maker of titles; this would be a dream assignment.

The resurrection of an old brand would be the inception of this new one. Living Books, the products that created the category of highly interactive children’s books, was dormant for years. Broderbund was the original publisher and in a series of acquisition/mergers/spin-outs and ownership changes, Living Books ended up as the property of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Despite a decade of great success, new stories in the Living Books series were not released, and the software languished without updates to newer operating systems for PC and Macs.

Mickey Mantle, once Broderbund’s VP of Engineering/CTO and now an entrepreneur, struck a deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to re-publish the Living Books series, which includes about 20 individual stories each by a variety of noted authors, including Mercer Mayer (Little Monster), Marc Brown (Arthur), Jan and Stan Berenstain (Berenstain Bears), Dr. Seuss and others. For today’s kids, the assets from the original CD-ROM titles, like  graphics, animations, sound and music, would be used directly by a new technology platform developed by Mickey’s team running on iPads and iPhones, Android mobile devices, and current Mac and PC computers.

Once again, Living Books would live, but it would have to do so under a different name. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt allowed the Living Books content to be re-published so long as the Living Books name remained theirs. That required the new publisher to use a new moniker but could include an attribution that the stories were “originally published as a Living Book by Broderbund Software” and the display of a small Living Books logo accompanying the attribution. The new name would have to coexist and contrast with the former one.

The original Living Books logo

I interviewed the founders of the company: Mickey Mantle; his wife, Natasha Krol, a PR and marketing veteran; and Mark Schlichting, an expert in child education and language development, a children’s book author and illustrator, the creator of the hysterical, award-winning Noodle Words app, and the original creator of Living Books.

I learned from them that Living Books and its reincarnation were richer, deeper and far more interactive than other e-books. Every page of every title features a multitude of tappable elements. With a dozen or more things to do on each page, children linger longer. Their attention, knowledge and imagination are strengthened as a result.

The new brand had two key facets: education and play. Because education is sometimes framed as work – homework, schoolwork, et al. – I first believed these ideas stood in opposition. Indeed, the pedagogical foundation of Living Books 1.0 was rigorous enough that thousands of schools incorporated them and accompanying teaching aids into their curricula. Even today, some schools keep legacy Macs or PC systems around just to retain access to Broderbund’s wunderkind series.

In our discussion, Mark explained to me that play actually enhances learning. If kids have fun while learning, they will engage more deeply and eagerly with the materials. The new brand and its name would have to convey that these interactive books are both educational and fun in order to appeal to kids, parents and educators.

The new name would also have to stand out in the absurdly crowded iTunes and Android marketplaces (500,000 apps and counting). Presented with a list of hundreds of interactive book choices, the brand name needed to leap off the screen to catch the attention of a busy parent or impatient child.   

I wrote name objectives that assimilated and synthesized the interviews and background research into one page. With the criteria for name development and selection established, creative development could commence.

Quoting Maurice Sendak, who passed while this naming project was in development: Let the wild rumpus start!

The Internet was my creative playground. I discovered inspiration researching children’s words, vocabulary acquisition and development, “Dolch” words, fairy tales, games, verbs, exclamations, and children’s word play. Foundational words like fun, happy, laughter, tickle and learning were fed into corpora engines, word lists and other online naming powertools like Wordnik, Sketch Engine, and OneLook. Specialized children’s sites like Lanternfish supplemented my longstanding resources, as did primary research with my nieces and nephews. Watching the kids, who age from 4-7, play with a beta version of Living Books on my iPad demonstrated its power; they threw themselves into the stories and played with rapt attention.

Here’s a list of some of the creative searches I did online. Please consider this list a handy resource for your naming projects:

action verbs
animal sound verbs
baby talk
cvc words
double letter words
first verbs
first words
frequentative
fun words
funny laughter words
happy-happy joy-joy
i am talking
idioms for kids
idioms in education
laffterglow
language acquisition
language development
the first words that children learn
learning words
list of verbs
meanings pictures sentence list
movement-fast
movers and shakers
my dogs words
my little ponies
of imitative origin
onomatopoetic
phrasal verbs list
place names of distinction
potionbook
punkin words
rhyming words
songs
sounds
stragglers
that’s funny
time to be cute
verbs
verbverse
wander
wander rhyme
wonder
wonder rhyme
wordplay is child’s play for punsters
words my 19 month old daughter says
words used by or to young children

I also used Sketch Engine quite a bit. Here are some of the terms searched for this project. Bear in mind that Sketch Engine requires a paid subscription (well worth it!) and thus links will work only after you've logged in:

fun

book

laugh

learn

play

playful

smart

tickle

wander

wonder

These lists illustrate how different resources can be used to delve into one idea, and the surprising sources of inspiration that can come up when you’re freely exploring (my little ponies!). These offer glimpses into a naming mind.

 

The stories in Living Books are playful and multidimensional, and I strived to create names that were, too. Making frequent use of a specific creative technique – letter substitution – generated scads of such names. It’s the same method I used to name Fanhattan and BrainForest.

The words wonder and wander, being one letter apart, were already mingling. I researched all English words that contain wonder, and respelled those results with an a. Thus, wonderful became wanderful.

Wanderful is packed with paradoxes. It brings together many ideas, yet is perfectly simple. It is a new word that feels familiar. It is as surprising as it is comforting. Wanderful describes the books, full of joy and the invitation to explore. It describes the free-form play afforded by Living Books’ expansive and non-linear interactivity. It describes whimsy and curiosity, delight and enrichment.

After preliminary screening, Wanderful was presented along with 30 other candidates. The client team deliberated and chose Wanderful plus a few backup names for full legal vetting. Upon clearing, Wanderful was adopted as the final name.

The wonderful Wanderful identity designed by Wild Out West

The Wanderful icon, now available at an iOS app store near you!

It might be coincidence, or maybe zeitgeist, that the day before Wanderful was announced in June, the New York Times Sunday Review featured this passage in an article about presence and happiness:

“In a modern world, when can we come closest to our original, thought-free happiness? Well, the Harvard psychologists noted that, after sex, the two activities during which we are most fully in the present, are conversation and exercise. Rousseau saw this as well; but forget the treadmill: he lost himself in mountains and valleys and, while walking, conversed with himself. Indeed, ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’ is a manifesto on the benefits of wondering while wandering.”

The Wanderful brand launched ahead of the books themselves. Starting today, Wanderful Storybooks will be sold in the iOS app store for $4.99 each. Android and Kindle versions will soon follow

It’s a Wanderful launch party: Mark, Anthony, Mickey

Congratulations Mickey, Natasha and Mark: What a Wanderful world this will be!

Look for Wanderful on the iOS app store, Facebook, Twitter and on their home page.
 

Pause: A Brand For Our Time

One afternoon, an entrepreneur named Ben Tabai called me. He liked my blog, and wanted to know if I was interested in helping him name a new relaxation beverage. The opportunity was so unusual, so exciting, that just developing the name didn’t feel like it would be enough. I proposed that Operative Words also develop the tagline and provide creative direction on the brand identity and packaging. Our mutual enthusiasm sealed the deal.

This project began, as all do, with learning about the product category. I discovered that the emergence of relaxation beverages bears significance. More than just new products on the shelf, relaxation beverages are an inevitable outcome of our times.

Let’s consider their larger context. Advances in technology enable people to be constantly connected. Social networks and societal expectations urge an immediate response to every email, tweet and text message that comes our way. As a result, we have become overloaded and under-rested. It’s no wonder that relaxation beverage sales doubled between 2008 and 2010, and is projected to double again by 2014. Our growing need to unplug is reflected in articles, springing up everywhere.

The names of current relaxation beverages reflect the opposite of our connected world. More analog than digital, the names have a vacation/zen/escape vibe. There’s surprisingly little differentiation:

Dr. Zen’s Liquid Calm
RelaxZen
Serenity Zen
Ichill
Minichill
ViB (vacation in a bottle)
Tranquila
Mellow
R&R

The problem with these names is they are removed from workaday reality of today’s connected urbanites who have the greatest need to disconnect. They don’t reflect the hectic and demanding lives that characterize BlackBerry-next-to-the-bed workers. Aspirations to take a vacation in a bottle or retreat to zen serenity feel more like wishful thinking and suggest promises that can’t be fulfilled.

People who are overworked and always connected do need relaxation. But relaxation should be framed in a real-world and relevant context, not as a pie-in-the-sky, day-at-the-beach fantasy. Therefore, I recommended this new beverage should make relaxation practical and relevant. It should be inspired by, and be a part of, our digital, connected world.

Allow me to take a short detour and provide instructive details about the creative naming exercise that led to Pause.   

In developing creative directions for a naming project, it’s most fruitful to broaden core functions or benefits to more conceptual, expansive ideas. Creative development for this new brand required thinking about relaxation broadly and its context narrowly. Rather than just focus on relaxation, bigger ideas like change, decreasing, cessation and ideal end states were considered, specifically within contemporary and vernacular domains.

 
The ultimate name came up during a creative ‘excursion’ to the ‘world’ of electronics. An excursion is a brainstorming technique that inspires by analogy. I learned about excursions at Lexicon, where I was trained in Synectics problem solving by John Prince, whose father, George Prince, invented Synectics. Excursions are part of the Synectics process and an indispensable part of my creative process. Excursions are related to the ‘cloaked brief’ technique which I described in Creative Names the Easy Way.

Here’s how to use excursions to create brand names: Choose a key attribute or idea that’s essential to the new brand (in this case, change). Then, choose a ‘world’ that’s distant from the actual product category (for example, electronics). From there, brainstorm examples of the key word in that world. For example, change in the world of electronics would lead us to names like Toggle, Switch, and...Pause.

Electronics is an excursion world I came up with, even though there are many already in the Synectics roster. Here’s a list of other worlds to inspire your creative development:

007 Acoustics Agriculture Animals Archaeology Architecture Art Astronomy Biology Bridges Cartoons Celebrations Chemistry Clothes Comedy Computers Cooking Cosmetics Crafts Crime Decoration Dinner Parties Dwellings Economics Education Electricity Electronics

Espionage Exploration Famous People Fantasy Sports Farming Fashion Films Finance Folk Lore Games Gardening Geology Health History Journalism Kitchen Implements Law Machines Magic Mathematics Media Medicine Metalwork Minerals Models Money Movies

Music Myths Noise Nursing Oceans Parenting Physics Plants Psychology Racing Religion Rocks Romance Science Science Fiction Sculpture Shopping Smells Space Travel Textiles Theater Transportation Tribal Customs Vacations War Weather Woodworking

Through excursions and other idea generation techniques, over 900 potential names were developed for this assignment. A shortlist of several dozen candidates underwent preliminary trademark screening. About 30 names were presented to my client. 

Demonstrating keen judgement, the client zeroed-in on Pause. The name was unexpected yet relevant. Pause could be a philosophy, a mandate, and maybe even a movement. Enthusiasm was had by all. 

After Pause was vetted by the client’s legal counsel, the naming was complete. The next step was to develop a tagline. This proved to be more challenging than naming, perhaps because there were more creative possibilities, directions and objectives.

It was the general direction of time that inspired the best work. Take ownership of your time as a specific tagline direction, reflected the day-to-day demands that can make people feel as if their time is not under their control. A related tagline direction, be present now, is a cornerstone of mindful relaxation and de-stressing regimens, and therefore benefited from existing validation.

After two rounds of tagline creative there were plenty of good ideas, but nothing that quite rose to the level of the name. I called a colleague, Daniel Meyerowitz, to talk about the taglines. He’s the best marketing writer I know; I can always count on him to inspire great work.

Upon review, Daniel dismissed anything that sounded old-fashioned or new-agey. The most promising taglines were imperatives, especially those that would incite people to, in Daniel’s words, “reclaim now”. We talked about the power of owning the moment – being present and mindful – as an effective antidote to stress and worry. Then suddenly, I heard myself say, “make now yours”. It seemed like the words spoke themselves through me.

Daniel calmly said, “that’s it, that’s the tagline”. Make Now Yours is a call to action urging people to take control of their time. Relaxation is, as suggested by the tagline, really about coming back to yourself and being the present at this moment. Make Now Yours feels fresh and contemporary and fits with the name. Tagline: done.

Writing for the back of the bottle was also needed. I recall that Ben wrote the first draft, I wrote the second, and Daniel provided valuable direction and advice for this final version:

Sometimes the best way to recharge is to unplug. How? Naturally, with chamomile, lemon balm and wild oats to calm your mind and vitamin B’s and green tea antioxidants to clear your head.

Get back to your productive best with a Pause and a few minutes of downtime: Step away from your work and the screen to let your body and mind reboot.

You’ll be ready for anything and everything when you take control and make now yours.

Writing: done.

With the word work complete, it was time to express the brand visually with a logo and packaging. Ben engaged several designers from around the world who submitted sketches of their ideas. I continued in my role as creative director of the brand by reviewing work, insisting on simplicity, and guiding creative to reflect the spirit of the brand.

The leading logo built on the name by incorporating a pause symbol in the letter u of Pause. It was elegant serendipity: by sheer accident, the symbol was centered perfectly in the word.

Behold: the Pause logo

Like the name and logo, the packaging design for Pause would also have to reflect our wired lives. Ben Tabai, my client, was on the front line, evaluating over 120 initial designs and then sending to me those that passed muster. Ben accomplished an enormous task in time and judgement. In my estimation, the most intriguing packaging candidate had its origins in ISO-like icons and modern vernacular: In the foreground, silhouettes of two people lounged on a bench while around them, in tinted colors, were busy workers on their cell phones and on the move. The silhouettes sat calmly amid the commotion. The graphics depicted a modern-day still life. Here’s an early rendition:

Good, but not quite there.

The design was simplified and polished. Instead of two people lounging, there would be just one. Instead of a bench, the figure sat back relaxing in an office chair. Appetizing imagery of fruit was added. The typography and layout was refined again and again. Packaging design: done.

Get your paws on Pause. 

With the core brand identity and packaging complete, the client brought the brand to life in other media. There’s a website, Facebook presence, and periodic pop-up Pause relaxation stations that give hardworking people a chance to pause, drink Pause, and pause for a chair massage.

Clients get the work they deserve. Judging by the results of the Pause branding effort, Ben Tabai deserves high praise – and sales! – for his strong judgement and hard work. As Ben’s first branding endeavor, Pause precedes what will undoubtedly be an enduring and successful future.   

 
That’s the story of Pause, a brand for our time.