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Zinzin

Archives for October 2011

Here comes Zinzin

Zinzin light drawing

Zinzin has emerged from the underground. After months of development, I am excited to announce the launch of the naming agency Zinzin and our new website at Zinzin.com. We believe in the emotional power of names, names that become art and poetry, not just commodities that nobody can remember. From a rigorous process, we create powerful product and company names to propel and differentiate brands beyond their competition. We want to set your brand free.

For the past nine years I have been the co-founder and creative director of the naming firm Igor, and have created Zinzin to expand into new directions and further advance my vision of the power of names. I have assembled a great team to help me realize this vision, and together we are driven to create amazing names for our clients.

I believe that the Zinzin website is now the deepest resource available for understanding the nuts and bolts of naming companies and products. The site includes a detailed Process section; the Naming Manifesto, which lays out our philosophy in numbered bites and will continue to grow; a rich Portfolio of the names we have created; a Press section with the articles we have appeared in; and our Blog, Observations (&Inspirations), where we will have an ongoing dialog about all issues related to naming, branding, art and culture. You can read about Our Story, Our People and Our Name, and Contact us if you’d like to learn how we can help you with your naming project.

Another feature of the Zinzin website is The Compendium of Amazing Names (The CAN), a regularly updated collection of the greatest and most powerful company and product names, as we see them, together with a brief analysis of why each is so effective. We created The CAN because we and others in the naming community often talk and write about what we think makes for great brand names, but other than a few examples, no larger sampling of such names has ever been assembled. Until now. We believe The CAN will be a great reference for understanding how mere names can be transformed into successful brands with stopping and staying power. The CAN is also a celebration, sort of a “Names Hall of Fame,” which will hopefully help us advance our larger mission of seeing the world filled with great names, no matter their origin.”

Our website also includes a Downloads page, where you can download our Naming Guides in PDF format, along with a nicely designed PDF version of the Naming Manifesto.

We are pumped up, excited about the future, and already helping clients navigate the adventure that is naming, on their way to achieving the ultimate goal: having a powerful brand name that propels itself through the culture and gives their marketing efforts an enormous boost for years to come. Zinzin has arrived.

Cheers,
Jay Jurisich
Founder / Creative Director
Zinzin

Zinzin name in light

[Image: that’s me drawing Zinzin with light, July 14, 2011 at the end of the mile-long Lava River Cave near Bend, Oregon. 80°F above ground, 42°F in the cave.]

Don DeLillo short story collection reviewed

Don DeLillo

There’s a good review by John Banville in the Financial Times of a Don DeLillo short story collection, Don DeLillo: The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories. The stories are dated 1979 to 2010. Here’s a beautiful passage Banville quotes from “the 1983 story ‘Human Moments in World War III,’ a futuristic piece that might be from the word-processor of Stanislaw Lem or even Philip K. Dick:”

… floating over the continents, seeing the rim of the world, a line as clear as a compass arc, knowing it is just a turning of the bend to Atlantic twilight, to sediment plumes and kelp beds, an island chain glowing in the dusky sea.

Banville concludes the review with this pitch-perfect description of DeLillo: “this most inventive, elegant and subversive dreamer of contemporary nightmares.”

FridaySongs 8 playlist

Today’s FridaySongs YouTube playlist includes a treasure trove of moody grooves from Talk Talk, Daniel Lanois, Bill Withers, Charles Brown, Neko Case, Elvis Costello’s “Spectacle,” Randy Newman, Fiona Apple, Them, Greg Brown and Duane Allman – FridaySongs 8. Here’s the complete list:

  • Talk Talk – Runi
  • Talk Talk – I Believe In you
  • Daniel Lanois – Orange Kay
  • Daniel Lanois – The Maker
  • Daniel Lanois – JJ Leaves L.A.
  • Bill Withers – Use Me
  • Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine
  • Charles Brown – Driftin Blues
  • Neko Case – Don’t Forget Me
  • Elvis Costello’s Spectacle – The Weight
  • Elvis Costello’s Spectacle – Loretta
  • Randy Newman – Louisiana 1927
  • Fiona Apple – Never Is A promise
  • Them – Here Comes the Night
  • Greg Brown – Hillbilly Girl
  • Greg Brown – Sleeper
  • Duane Allman – Amazing Grace
  • Duane Allman – Little Martha

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

Tom Waits: meanings unscrewing themselves from practical words

Good interview with Tom Waits in today’s Sunday Times, A Grizzled Troubadour Dusts Off His Bowler. Nice discussion of the craft of putting words together to create evocative lyrics:

In unscripted conversation, Tom Waits the performer — with the buzz in his voice, the metaphorical mind-set and the strange-but-true fact at his fingertips — is recognizable in the thoughtful songwriter who discusses the craft of recording handclaps and the serendipity of meaning found in triple rhymes. He slings those in a new song, “After You Die,” a long list of similes — “like a tramp choir crying/like a campfire dying”— to ponder oblivion.

“There’s truths there that spiral out of what appears to be just a word game,” he said. “That’s what I find mystifying about the meanings of things: they kind of unscrew themselves from the practical words.”

Meanings “unscrewing themselves from the practical words,” yes! A perfect description of how meaning and meaningfulness can arrive mysteriously from the confluence of language. And I love the phrase “practical words” — the words by themselves are nothing special, daily, utilitarian, practical, but through their mixing and recombination comes the magic.

See also: The art of Tom Waits: Saved and “Named” Seeds (Heirloom Tomato)

FridaySongs 7 playlist

Today’s FridaySongs YouTube playlist includes rare Van Morrison demos, dynamic duos from Weller & Mitchell, and even more beauty – FridaySongs 7, features the following songs/videos:

  • Philip Glass: Madrush, part 1
  • Philip Glass: Madrush, part 2
  • Paul Weller – The Loved
  • Paul Weller Brand New Start Acoustic
  • Van Morrison: And It Stoned Me (Unplugged In The Studio)
  • Joni Mitchell – The Magdalene Laundries
  • Joni Mitchell – Slouching towards Bethlehem
  • Anoushka Shankar – Pancham Se Gara
  • David Sylvian – Let The Happiness In (live)
  • Yo La Tengo – Autumn Sweater
  • Daniel Lanois – Still Water
  • Harry Nilsson – Jump Into The Fire
  • Spencer Davis Group – I’m a Man
  • Bonnie Raitt – Angel from Montgomery (live)
  • Ry Cooder – Jesus On The Mainline

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

FridaySongs 6 music playlist – Declining Crybaby Mystic Poets Dreaming of Smoke

Today’s FridaySongs YouTube playlist features the eloquent warbling of crybaby mystic poets breathlessly smoking about the decline Of country and western civilization – FridaySongs 6, features the following songs/videos:

  • Philip Glass – Metamorphosis 1 (Branka Parlic on piano)
  • David Sylvian – When Poets Dreamed Of Angels
  • Lambchop – The Decline of Country and Western Civilization
  • Talking Heads – Heaven
  • David Gray – Kathleen (KCRW’s Berkeley St. Sessions)
  • Patrick Sky – Separation Blues
  • Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash – One Too Many Mornings
  • Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Breathless
  • Tindersticks – Black Smoke (official video)
  • The National – Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks (Live Uncut)
  • Van Morrison – Into The Mystic

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

Get outside of yourself

Simon Sinek on the importance of understanding that you don’t know what you don’t know, and the value of going out and finding it. Especially interesting is his take on why the best ideas don’t happen during brainstorming sessions (0:38), because those only activate the conscious mind, not the subconscious mind:

Sinek writes:

Most of us stay in our industry to help us be better at what we do. We read our own industry’s trades, we attend our own industry’s conferences, we talk to others from our industry and we take classes offered by “experts” from the inside. Though we may learn bits and pieces this way, we can never learn to innovate and solve problems or think in new ways like this. To truly think differently, we need to look way outside our own industries. If we see and learn how others solve problems, we can adapt and apply the same lessons to our own work.

Get outside of yourself, your specialty, your industry. If you want learn how to create great names, don’t just read what naming, branding and marketing “experts” have to say — read poetry, great literature, see a film that challenges you, and go to art galleries and museums. Great names are all around us, in the language of poetry, literature, art, science, nature and life. Get out there and wallow in it, and you’ll have more inspiration than the usual “brainstorming” session can ever produce.

FridaySongs 5 music playlist – a requiem for Bert and Steve

Today’s FridaySongs YouTube playlist is a requiem of sorts for Bert Jansch and Steve Jobs, both of whom passed away on Wednesday of this week – FridaySongs 5, features the following songs/videos:

  • Bert Jansch – Black Waterside
  • Hope Sandoval – Courting Blues (Bert Jansch) – Live in London, 2009
  • Sibylle Baier – I Lost Something in the Hills
  • Nick Drake – Things Behind The Sun
  • Elliott Smith – Between The Bars
  • Madeleine Peyroux – Between The Bars
  • Devendra Banhart – Little Yellow Spider
  • Ray LaMontagne – Gone Away From Me (BBC 4 Sessions)
  • Bright Eyes – Tourist Trap (Sessions) AOL
  • Tim Buckley – Buzzin’ Fly
  • Jeff Buckley – New Year’s Prayer
  • Mimi and Richard Farina – Children Of Darkness

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