• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Process
    • Competitive Namescape
      • Namescape: Search Engines
      • Blank Namescape Chart
    • Company Names
    • Product Names
    • Service Names
    • Brand Positioning
    • Name Development
      • Descriptive Names
      • Invented Names
      • Experiential Names
      • Evocative Names
    • Trademark Prescreening
    • Linguistic Connotation Screening
    • Name Evaluation
    • Naming Project Work Plans
  • Portfolio
    • Clients
  • Manifesto
  • Press
  • Blog
    • Archives
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Our Name
      • Finnegans Wake
    • References / Testimonials
  • Resources
  • Contact

Zinzin

Archives for December 2011

December 29, 2011 By Jay

The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

Dylan Thomas - 18 Poems

“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.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: creativity, Dylan Thomas, nature, video

December 27, 2011 By Jay

Over two decades of Words Of The Year

This is the time of year when the linguistically inclined offer their opinions on which “Words Of The Year” best capture the zeitgeist of the year that has been. Some of our favorite nominators of this year’s Word include Geoff Nunberg, Ben Zimmer, and Nancy Friedman. But it’s the American Dialect Society that “officially” — though “just for fun” — anoints the Word Of The Year (WOTY), which they have been doing every year since 1990. So, for a little time travel and historical perspective, here are the WOTYs for each of the past twenty years (via Wikipedia):

  • 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?.

UPDATE January 6, 2012: The 2011 Word of the Year is Occupy.

Filed Under: History, Language Tagged With: American Dialect Society, Ben Zimmer, Geoff Nunberg, Nancy Friedman, Word Of The Year

December 23, 2011 By Martin

FridaySongs 14 music playlist

Howlin' Wolf - The Real Folk Blues
Adieu lady stardust, bye bye clean Wichita, so long, who are you? Wish you were here. Today’s YouTube music playlist, FridaySongs 14:

  • Bon Iver – The Wolves
  • Bon Iver – The Park
  • Elbow – Teardrop
  • Black Dub – I Believe in You
  • Black Dub – Surely You’re Meant To Be Mine
  • Tom Waits – That Feel
  • Tom Waits – Who Are You
  • Tom Waits – Strange Weather
  • Louis Armstrong- La Vie En Rose
  • Louis Armstrong – Basin Street Blues
  • Les Paul – Caravan
  • Les Paul Trio – Over The Rainbow
  • Nana Mouskouri – Adieu Angeline
  • Seu Jorge – Rock N’ Roll Suicide
  • Seu Jorge – Lady Stardust
  • Leonard Cohen – Tower of Song
  • Leonard Cohen – The Partisan
  • Gillian Welch and David Rawlings – Billy
  • Gillian Welch – Elvis Presley Blues
  • Gillian Welch – I’ll Fly Away
  • Bob Dylan – Moonshiner
  • Bob Dylan – Tomorrow is a Long Time
  • John Coltrane – Spiritual
  • John Coltrane – A Love Supreme, Part 1
  • John Coltrane – A Love Supreme, Part 2
  • Martha Wainwright – Bye Bye Blackbird
  • Martha Wainwright – Stormy Weather
  • Johnny Cash – Wichita Lineman
  • Johnny Cash – In My Life
  • Blind Willie Johnson – John The Revelator
  • Blind Willie Johnson – The Soul Of A Man
  • Blind Willie McTell – Statesboro Blues
  • Blind Lemon Jefferson – See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
  • Lightnin Hopkins – Baby Please Dont Go
  • Big Joe Williams – Baby Please Don’t Go
  • Muddy Waters – Mannish Boy
  • Muddy Waters – Got My Mojo Workin
  • Howlin’ Wolf – Smokestack Lightning
  • Howlin’ Wolf – Shake For Me
  • Howlin’ Wolf – Killing Floor
  • Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
  • Roger Waters – Pigs On The Wing, Part 1
  • Wyclef Jean – Wish You Were Here
  • Wyclef Jean – Knockin on Heavens Door

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

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: FridaySongs

December 22, 2011 By Jay

Embracing creative friction and uncertainty

Jeremy Dean, in a recent article on his site PsyBlog, Why People Secretly Fear Creative Ideas, notes that creative ideas are often rejected in favor of conformity and uniformity, and why this is so, citing several psychology studies (Mueller et al. 2011; Westby & Dawson, 1995) to back up his case. Dean asks rhetorically,

Does society really value creativity? People say they want more creative people, more creative ideas and solutions, but do they really?

The answer, sadly, is no, but why is that so? The reason, Dean writes, is that fear of uncertainty overrules the desire for creativity:

Across two experiments Mueller and colleagues found that when people felt uncertain they were:

  • more likely to have negative thoughts about creative ideas,
  • and found it more difficult to recognise creative ideas.

This supports the idea that people don’t like creative ideas because they tend to increase uncertainty. The thinking goes like this: we know how to do things we’ve done before, but new things are mysterious. How will we achieve it? Is it practical? What could go wrong? And so on…

People don’t like to feel uncertain; it’s an aversive state that generally we try to escape from. Unfortunately creativity requires uncertainty by definition, because we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done before.

People deal with the disconnect by saying one thing, “Creativity is good, we want more of it!” but actually rejecting creative ideas for being impractical.

And, the more uncertain people feel, the harder they find it to recognise a truly creative idea. So as a society we end up sticking our heads in the sand and carrying on doing the same old things we’ve been doing all along, just to avoid feeling uncertain.

Instead we should be embracing uncertainty because it’s only when we’re unsure that we can be sure we’re in new territory.

Creativity requires uncertainty by definition, because we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done before. Dean is spot-on in his assessment, and a primary factor keeping people from embracing uncertainty is fear of failure. Adrian Savage wrote a great article earlier this year for Lifehack.org, How fear of failure destroys success,  where he notes just how vitally important failure’s handmaidens, trial and error, are to achieving ultimate success:

Trial and error are usually the prime means of solving life’s problems. Yet many people are afraid to undertake the trial because they’re too afraid of experiencing the error. They make the mistake of believing that all error is wrong and harmful, when most of it is both helpful and necessary. Error provides the feedback that points the way to success. Only error pushes people to put together a new and better trial, leading through yet more errors and trials until they can ultimately find a viable and creative solution. To meet with an error is not to fail, but to take one more step on the path to final success. No errors means no successes either.

Savage goes on to illustrate various different ways that individuals and corporations allow fear of failure to block creative solutions to problems: a culture of perfection, clinging to past success, being a high achiever, or being unbalanced in any one direction (too over-achieving, too moral, too anything), and that finding a proper balance is the way out of this trap:

Everyone likes to succeed. The problem comes when fear of failure is dominant. When you can no longer accept the inevitability of making mistakes, nor recognize the importance of trial and error in finding the best and most creative solution. The more creative you are, the more errors you are going to make. Get used to it. Deciding to avoid the errors will destroy your creativity too.

Balance counts more than you think. Some tartness must season the sweetest dish. A little selfishness is valuable even in the most caring person. And a little failure is essential to preserve everyone’s perspective on success.

We hear a lot about being positive. Maybe we also need to recognize that the negative parts of our lives and experience have just as important a role to play in finding success, in work and in life.

Savor these two of Savage’s ideas, they are golden: 1) The more creative you are, the more errors you are going to make. Get used to it. Deciding to avoid the errors will destroy your creativity too. 2) We hear a lot about being positive. Maybe we also need to recognize that the negative parts of our lives and experience have just as important a role to play in finding success, in work and in life. The key is to remain open to new ideas, methods, and experiences.

This applies to all aspects of business, but resonates especially strongly for me in how it relates to the naming process. In our own work here at Zinzin, we live in permanent trial and error mode, because we accept the fact that on every naming project, we will ultimately create hundreds of “failure” names that will lead us to the one great name that defines a successful outcome. Savage’s description of trial-error-reiteration adroitly captures what our line of work entails. You can only find the perfect name by multiple rounds of experiment, play, questioning, red herrings, dead ends, trips down rabbit holes, self-criticism, debate, and chance. Be open to creative ideas in yourself and others, and embrace the trial/error/failure/try again process.

When you get knocked over by failure and fall down on your face, get up and repeat, over and over again. The good news is that once you make this process a habit, it becomes second nature and much easier to tolerate. Eventually you realize that the failures are not speed bumps on the road to success — they are actually catalysts, without which there wouldn’t be any success.

Filed Under: Ideas, Naming Tagged With: creativity, failure

December 19, 2011 By Jay

What are the epic stories behind your brand?

From the Naming & Branding Manifesto, number 9: Which archetypes – The Hero, The Great Mother, The Mentor, The Guardian, The Herald, The Shadow, The Trickster – does your brand most closely align with? Discover the epic ideas behind your brand and they will lead to your unique story and positioning.

Filed Under: Branding, Zinzin Tagged With: archetypes, stories

December 5, 2011 By Jay

Watch out for naming experts

From the Naming & Branding Manifesto, number 26:  Beware “experts” who cloak their methodology in the jargony garb of fancy proprietary “black box” naming “solutions.” Naming is hard work, and to do it right requires focus, passion and persistence, but rocket surgery it is not. If a consultant has a rigorous process for creating names, they shouldn’t be afraid to share that with the whole world.

Filed Under: Naming, Zinzin Tagged With: naming experts

December 3, 2011 By Martin

Fallen Flags

A Fallen Flag is a rather poetic term that refers to a railroad company that is no longer in existence due to bankruptcy or merger. Since the late 1950s the North American railroad industry has undergone an epic brand consolidation. In fact, presently only four Class I railroads still exist under their original names. The surviving brands are the Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad. Why is this important? I am not sure, but I came across this logo of a Fallen Flag while on a recent stroll and did a little research. Yes I read cereal boxes as well.

Southern Pacific railroad

1959: Southern Pacific moved more ton-miles of freight than any other US railroad.

1965: Southern Pacific’s bid for control of the Western Pacific is rejected by the ICC.

1967: SP opens the longest stretch of new railroad construction in a quarter century as the first trains roll over the Palmdale Cutoff through Cajon Pass.

May 1, 1971: Amtrak takes over long-distance passenger operations in the United States; the only SP revenue passenger trains thereafter were the commutes between San Francisco and San Jose.

1980: Now owning a 98.34% control of the Cotton Belt.

1984: The Southern Pacific Company merges into Santa Fe Industries parent of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, to form Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corporation.

1985: New Caltrain locomotives and rolling stock replace SP equipment on the Peninsula Commute, marking the end of Southern Pacific passenger service with SP equipment.

October 13, 1988: Rio Grande Industries, parent of the Rio Grande Railroad, takes control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The merged company retains the name “Southern Pacific” for all railroad operations.

1989: Southern Pacific acquires 223 miles of former Alton trackage between St. Louis and Joliet from the Chicago, Missouri & Western. This marks the first time that the Southern Pacific has served the Chicago area on its own rails.

March 17, 1991: The Southern Pacific changes its corporate image, replacing the century-old Roman Lettering with the Rio Grande-inspired Speed Lettering.

1992: Northwestern Pacific is merged into SP, ending NWP’s existence as a corporate subsidiary of SP and leaving the Cotton Belt as SP’s only remaining major railroad subsidiary. Of interesting note, the Northwestern Pacific’s south end would be sold off by UP, and turned into a “new” Northwestern Pacific.

1996: The Union Pacific Railroad finishes the acquisition that was effectively begun almost a century before with the purchase of the Southern Pacific by UP in 1901, until divestiture was ordered in 1913. Ironically, although Union Pacific was the dominant company, taking complete control of SP, its corporate structure was merged into Southern Pacific, which on paper became the “surviving company”; which then changed its name to Union Pacific.

1996: The merged company retains the name “Union Pacific” for all railroad operations.


See also: Fallen Flag: Ouabache / Wabash

Filed Under: Language Tagged With: dead brands, Fallen Flag, railroads

December 2, 2011 By Jay

FridaySongs 13 music playlist

Bach to still water, sweet lonesome Jersey lightning. Today’s YouTube music playlist, FridaySongs 13:

  • Duane Allman – Come On In My Kitchen
  • Robert Johnson- Come On In My Kitchen
  • Pablo Casals – Bach Suite No 1 for Cello (part 1)
  • Pablo Casals – Bach Suite No 1 for Cello (part 2)
  • Daniel Lanois – Acadie
  • Daniel Lanois – Still Water
  • Ayub Ogada – Obiero
  • Bob Dylan – Main Title Theme Billy
  • Van Morrison – Slim Slow Slider
  • Van Morrison – Sweet Thing
  • Van Morrison – Way Young Lovers Do
  • Greg Allman & Dickey Betts – Melissa / Come & Go Blues (Jam)
  • Delaney and Bonnie w/ Duane Allman – Come On In My Kitchen
  • Eddie Vedder – Dream a Little Dream
  • Chris Cornell – Seasons
  • Bob Dylan – Moonshiner
  • Bob Dylan – The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
  • Nick Cave – Into My Arms
  • Neko Case – Don’t Forget Me
  • Tom Waits – Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis
  • Tom Waits – Waltzing Matilda
  • Tom Waits – Jersey Girl (Alternate Version)
  • Bob Dylan – Billy 1
  • Bob Dylan – Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)
  • Bruce Springsteen – Across The Border
  • Bruce Springsteen – Dry Lightning
  • Leon Russell – Come On In My Kitchen
  • Robert Fripp – Frippertronics

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

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: FridaySongs

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Advertising
  • Art
  • Branding
  • Design
  • Film
  • History
  • Ideas
  • Language
  • Literature
  • Music
  • Naming
  • Narrative
  • Nomenclature
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • Quotes
  • Science
  • Zinzin

Recent Posts

  • New IFG grapes launched — named by Zinzin
  • Naming Advice For New Businesses
  • Words have no size: the corny magic of Ed Ruscha
  • Industry Jargon: Elephant Walk
  • Playing For Change: Ripple around the world

Recent Comments

  • Lance Foster on Who was St. George William Joseph Stock?
  • Bob on How HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey” got his name…and no, it’s not IBM minus one
  • Rudy on Cristo Redentor by Donald Byrd, 1963
  • Ivan Allen on Zen in action: no tree, no mirror, no dust
  • Aaron J Ziegler on Nicknames and slang of the San Francisco Giants

Footer

Contact

415-857-5775

contact@zinzin.com

Zinzin
1025 Carleton Street
Suite #9
Berkeley, CA 94710

Navigation

  • Home
  • Process
  • Portfolio
  • Manifesto
  • Press
  • Blog
  • About
  • Resources
  • Contact

Connect

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS (blog)

We are Zinzin

Zinzin is a naming and branding agency that creates powerful product and company names to propel and differentiate brands beyond their competition. We want to set your brand free.

Copyright © 2021 Zinzin Group Inc · Log in