Lists of Note has posted the great writer Henry Miller’s list of 11 commandments, which he wrote for himself to follow. I have annotated Miller’s list (in bold, below) with my observations about how each of his commandments can be applied to various aspects of the naming process.

COMMANDMENTS

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished. Keep your attention focused on the task at hand. Set aside time and space free from the distractions of the Internet, social media and telephones to concentrate on your naming project. In the words of Buckminster Fuller, “Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.”
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.” Recognize when a project is finished, and be prepared to move on.
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. As we’ve said in our Manifesto, naming should be fun and you have to set a positive tone.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time! Another way to say this is to keep the project as objective as possible by staying focused on the brand positioning, not on subjective reactions to names.
5. When you can’t create you can work. Don’t wait for “inspiration.” If you don’t feel as if any good, creative names are resulting from your process at any given time, don’t force it or stress out. Do some other related work to feed your fires: reading, research, making lists. Henry is right: you can’t always create, but you can always work. And don’t underestimate the value of hard work. To quote the late, great Cy Twombly: “When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.”
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers. Diligence and perseverance. Try to make some kind of progress every day, or at least increase your understanding of the process.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it. Allow life and real world experience to inspire and inform your naming process. Don’t get stuck in abstractions and ruts. Burn your thesaurus (don’t worry, it’ll still be there for you online when you really need it.)
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only. See number three, above.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude. Give yourself flexibility to grow and adapt, but keep bringing the focus back to the project and the brand positioning (see number four, above). As the project progresses, it should become ever more focused.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. Don’t force all the great names in your head into the current project. Think only of the specific positioning of the current project, and make sure all names under consideration map strongly to that positioning.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards. Naming comes first. After that, the rest is gravy, icing, spice, and all other food metaphors.

(Source: Henry Miller on Writing, via Lists of Note.)

“Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.” ~Gustave Flaubert

Do you have any music or video recommendations for us at Zinzin? If so, please let us know.

The Danish “Dogme 95” directors created some amazing films, and their famous Manifesto, below, still resonates with us. Try replacing “movies/films” in the Manifesto with “names/naming” and consider how it applies to the process of naming and branding:

1. Dogme 95 is a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in the Spring of 1995.
2. Dogme 95 has the expressed goal of countering ‘certain tendencies’ in the cinema today.
3. Dogme 95 is a rescue action!
4. In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The New Wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck. Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for awhile, but no changes. The Wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The Wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby … false!
5. To Dogme 95 cinema is not individual!
6. Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratization of the cinema. For the first time anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media comes, the more important the avant-garde. It is no accident that the phrase ‘avant-garde’ has military connotations. Discipline is the answer … we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition!
7. Dogme 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.

Here is the 11-point Dogme 95 VOW OF CHASTITY:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found)
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.
11. Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a “work,” as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and setting. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.

Of course, every Dogme 95 director broke one or more of these rules, but having them in place and following them as best they could gave them their work a structure, a framework that lead to the creation of some brilliant films. It should serve as inspiration to anyone involved in a creative endeavor, including the naming of companies and products. Make sure you have a rigorous structure in place for your naming process, and stick with it. Also, the brand positioning should serve the function of a “vow of chastity,” and any name that doesn’t support the primary positioning directives of a brand should be jettisoned in favor of those that do.

Do you have any music or video recommendations for us at Zinzin? If so, please let us know.

Here is the complete list if you care to sing along with John or perform your own version of “Sentences on Conceptual Art” by Sol Le Witt:

1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal art is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

First published in 0-9 ( New York ), 1969, and Art-Language ( England ), May 1969.

Google has its eyes on you. Notes Wikipedia: “Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. It was launched on May 25, 2007, originally only in several cities in the United States, and has since gradually expanded to include more cities and rural areas worldwide.”

Google must employ an army of Street View photographers worldwide, and they drive seemingly everywhere on earth taking pictures of anything and everything that appears in front of their nine-lensed cameras. Artist Jon Rafman has posted a selection of amazing Google Street View photographs on his Tumblr site 9-eyes. The collage below is just a taste — visit Rafman’s site to see them in all their glory.

The great Irish writer James Joyce died in 1941, and seventy years later, on January 1, 2012, his work has finally been set free from copyright restrictions, moving into the public domain. Notes the L.A. Times:

When the first day of 2012 dawned, the works of James Joyce moved into the public domain — for the most part. Joyce’s grandson Stephen, his only living relative, has long been thought to have been more of a hindrance than a help in terms of managing Joyce’s estate. Stephen charged high fees, refused scholars the right to quote from Joyce’s work and shut down the Irish government’s planned public readings of the  centenary of “Ulysses” when he threatened litigation.

Joyce’s work now belongs to the people.

A hoodenwinkle gave the signal and a blessing paper freed the flood. (FW 78.23)

Which is why this post has been interlaced with free quotes from Joyce’s last great work, Finnegans Wake. (The numbers in parentheses indicate “page.line” numbers.)

Joyce’s great works have been yearning to escape the clutches of his heir.

Ho hang! Hang ho! And the clash of our cries till we spring to be free. (FW 627.32)

And now, finally, they are free.

Hulp, hulp, huzzars! Raise ras tryracy! Freetime’s free! Up Lancesters! Anathem! (FW 348.28)

Time to celebrate.

And they all drank free. For one man in his armour was a fat match always for any girls under shurts. (FW 23.8)

The old laws are gone! Clap your hands, stomp your feet,

Fly your balloons, dannies and dennises! He’s doorknobs dead! And Annie Delap is free! Ones more. (FW 378.2)

There’s no going back now.

Its pith is full. The way is free. Their lot is cast.
So, to john for a john, johnajeams, led it be! (FW 399.33)

It will be great to see Joyce’s work spread out into the world, get remixed and adapted, his words washing over the world.

That’s how our oxyggent has gotten ahold of half their world. Moving about in the free of the air and mixing with the ruck. (FW 281.25)

The world reJoyces, the heir can err no longer. Here comes Sunny Jim.

Been so free! Thank you, besters! Hattentats have mindered. Blaublaze devil bobs have gone from the mode and hairtrigger nicks are quite out of time now. (FW 540.28)

Even Kate Bush is now free to record her song, “Flower of the Mountain,” as originally intended.

Tiss! Two pretty mistletots ribboned to a tree, up rose liberator and, fancy, they were free! (FW 588.36)

Feels good, doesn’t it?

O what a loovely freespeech ’twas (tep) to gar howalively hintergrunting! (FW 273.19)

The problem is, for any kind of creative endeavor, groupthink doesn’t work.

Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck observed, introversion fosters creativity by “concentrating the mind on the tasks in hand, and preventing the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.”

In other words, the social aspects of work might be beneficial and necessary to an individual’s overall health, but they are not conducive to creative work and the development of new ideas. And “creative work” is something that should be required of everyone in an organization, not just so-called “creatives.” Here is Apple co-founder and famous introvert Steve Wozniak describing engineers:

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

The key for any company or organization is to find the right balance, to recognize that people need uninterrupted “alone time” to do their best work, thought they and others in the organization can benefit from the collective energy of occasional group interaction. Interaction and exchange of ideas, not continuous collaboration, because,

…it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.

Privacy also makes us productive, notes Cain. She references a study of 600 computer programmers at 92 companies called the Coding War Games that showed quantitatively that “what distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay, it was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed.” And creative solitude helps learning too, because an individual can work more on the things that challenge them, which is not an option in a group learning situation.

The flip side of deep, focused, solitary work is the corporate brainstorming session. We’ve seen this time and again in the naming industry, where brainstorming sessions are usually conducted by companies in-house, or by their advertising agency. The company or agency will ask a group of its “creatives” to work late one night, fueled by pizza, beer and Red Bull, and work together to brainstorm a new name. As you may have guessed, such a process rarely if ever generates the strongest, most powerful names.

Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity….decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”

The reasons brainstorming fails are instructive for other forms of group work, too. People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of independence.”

Simon Sinek has also weighed-in on why the best ideas don’t happen though groupthink, pointing out that brainstorming sessions only activate the conscious mind, not the subconscious mind. He notes that your rational brain can only access about two feet of information around you, while your unconscious brain can access the equivalent of eleven acres of information around you. This treasure trove of unconscious information is where gut decisions and epiphanies come from, and they just can’t come out in the collective groupthink environment of a brainstorming session.

The only way to make brainstorming  productive is to have individuals work alone on the problem at hand before and after the group work, and use the brainstorming session for communication, interaction and amplification of the individual ideas, rather than a mechanism for creating those ideas. There simply is no substitute for the deep thought of individual alone time away from all distractions.

One exception to the general shortcomings of groupthink is electronic collaboration at a distance, or so-called “crowdsourcing,” where individuals working “alone together” have the potential to tap into the best of both worlds. In the rosiest of such scenarios, individuals still have plenty of solitary creative time, which is then combined with focused bursts of remote group collaboration free from the negative dynamics that come with in-person group interaction. Cain notes that, “most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy,” and finding the right balance is crucial for success:

To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time. And we must recognize that introverts like Steve Wozniak need extra quiet and privacy to do their best work.

Companies should take heed of these findings and incorporate them into how they structure their workflow and work environments. In our own naming work we have always worked this way, as individuals pursuing ideas on our own, punctuated by regular, brief and focused sessions for discussion, argument, and collaboration, both internally and with our clients; then back to our private spaces for more deep thought.

If your company is staffed only with extroverts, it’s time to hire some introverts, pronto, and give them the space they need to go deep. The extroverts will benefit too.

I’m a satisfied fool to want you, Layla Brown. Here is today’s FridaySongs YouTube music playlist, FridaySongs 15:

• Flume – Bon Iver
• re: Stacks – Bon Iver
• Dark Was the Night – Ry Cooder
• Make Me a Pallet on the Floor – Mississippi John Hurt
• I’m Satisfied – Mississippi John Hurt
• Poor Boy – John Fahey
• Layla – John Fahey
• Sad Sad Song – M. Ward
• Blue Bayou – Norah Jones & Matt Ward
• Dark Was The Night – Playing For Change
• Gimme Shelter – Playing For Change
• Redemption Song – Playing For Change
• Three Little Birds – Playing For Change
• Goye Kur – Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder
• Debe – Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté
• One Love – Playing For Change
• The Long Road – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Eddie Vedder
• Without You – Eddie Vedder
• Magdalene Laundries – Joni Mitchell
• She Moved Through The Fair – Sinéad O’Connor
• Wonderful – My Morning Jacket
• Golden – My Morning Jacket
• Irish Melody – Daniel Lanois
• Down To The River – Ray LaMontagne
• Here Comes The Sun – - Nina Simone
• I’m a Fool to Want You – Chet Baker
• I’m a Fool to Want You -Billie Holiday
• Summertime – Norah Jones
• Summertime – Miles Davis
• You Don’t Know Me – Norah Jones
• Dead Flowers – Townes Van Zandt
• Tom Thumb’s Blues – Townes Van Zandt
• Come And Go Blues – Gregg Allman
• Hollis Brown – Bob Dylan
• Seven Curses – Bob Dylan
• Come Talk To Me – Bon Iver
• Work Song – Charles Mingus
• Haitian Fight Song – Charles Mingus
• Split Sides – Radiohead & Sigur Rós

Do you have any music or video recommendations for us at Zinzin? If so, please let us know.

1. Check out the agency’s portfolio. Have they created any great names, or any names at all? Do they demonstrate the ability to create a range of names, or a narrow niche? Do any of the names resonate with you?
2. Does the agency have a well-developed process for creating names?
3. Is their process public and easy to understand, or is it missing in action, hidden behind a proprietary TM-branded “black box,” or riddled with alienating biz-speak and obfuscating consultant diagrams?
4. Is their naming process interactive, demanding your involvement throughout, or do they just go away for a month or two, return with 5 names and say, “pick one”? (Ours, BTW, is very hands-on and interactive.)
5. Does the agency have a clear philosophy of naming? Do you get the sense that they are passionate about naming? That they fully understand all aspects of the naming process and can communicate that clearly when you speak with them?
6. Does the agency have a blog and a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or other social media? If so, are they active? Do they have anything interesting to say? Do they have strong opinions that they are not afraid to share? Do they engage in conversations, or is it mostly just one-way marketing chatter that’s all about them and how awesome they are?
7. Can you get a company principal on the phone to discuss your project, or are you routed to “account rep” intermediaries? Are they helpful, and do you get a sense that they actively listen to you and understand your concerns?
8. Are they industry thought leaders, or followers?
9. Do you get the sense that working with this agency will be a creative joy, a waste of your time, or even downright drudgery?
10. Has the agency, with their own name, gone above and beyond being a generic commodity? Is their own name any good? (Surprisingly, many naming companies have generic names that cause them to be indistinguishable from each other, defeating the most important purpose of naming. Go figure.)

“The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” is a powerful, moody Dylan Thomas poem from his first book of poetry, 18 Poems,  published a month after turning twenty years old. It is about the creative force of nature, creative destruction, disruption, and how we human animals are but another manifestation of “nature,” not separate or apart from it.

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

The green fuse blasts the crooked rose with wintry fever. Through the rocks the mouthing streams stir the quicksand. Beyond the weather’s wind, the lips of time have ticked a heaven round the stars. Beautiful. Make and remake the poem in your mind. Live the poem. Let the words lead you to other words and beyond words.

Here’s Thomas reading the poem:

Thanks to Brian Phipps (@brandstrat) for quoting this poem on Twitter.

• 1990: bushlips (similar to “bullshit” – stemming from President George H. W. Bush’s 1988 “Read my lips: no new taxes” broken promise)
• 1991: The mother of all (as in Saddam Hussein’s foretold “Mother of all battles”)
• 1992: Not! (meaning “just kidding”)
• 1993: information superhighway
• 1994: cyber, morph (to change form)
• 1995: Web and (to) newt (to act aggressively as a newcomer)
• 1996: mom (as in “soccer mom”)
• 1997: millennium bug
• 1998: e- (as in “e-mail”)
• 1999: Y2K
• 2000: chad (from the 2000 Presidential Election controversy in Florida)
• 2001: 9-11
• 2002: weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)
• 2003: metrosexual
• 2004: red state, blue state, purple state (from the 2004 presidential election)
• 2005: truthiness, popularized on The Colbert Report
• 2006: plutoed (demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet Pluto)
• 2007: subprime (an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment)
• 2008: bailout (a rescue by government of a failing corporation)
• 2009: tweet (a short message sent via the Twitter service)
• 2010: app

Some of these past WOTYs have clearly plutoed since Y2K and prior, but others, such as 9-11 and red state / blue state, are likely to be with us for a long time. And some — see subprime and bailout — we will be all to happy to forget and consign to history’s dustbucket.

My vote for the 2011 WOTY, which the ADS will pick at their annual January meeting in Portland, Oregon, agrees with those of Nunberg and many others: Occupy. You can still nominate your favorites for consideration on the ADS page, What’s Your Word of the Year?.