Zinzin

Archives for February 2012

Chance encounters: A history of the Frisco Railroad name and logo

Frisco logo and raccoon skin inspiration

Like many, we always assumed that “Frisco,” the nickname out-of-towner’s often use for our fair city of San Francisco, was derived from “Francisco.” We were wrong. Here is the great story of the origins of the Frisco Railroad name and logo, a railroad that operated in the Midwest and South Central U.S. from 1876 to 1980. It is taken from 100 Years of Service, a booklet produced by the railroad in 1960 on the occasion of its centennial (the precursors of the Frisco Railroad began operating in 1860):

Few employees of the Frisco Railroad are acquainted with the history of the Frisco emblem or insignia which appears on timetables, advertising material, annual reports, calendars, etc., and is used by Employee Clubs on the railroad in making up their yearbooks.

Several years ago a pageant was given at Springfield, Mo., which told the history of that city on Frisco Lines, and after much research the story of how the Frisco emblem came into being, was uncovered. The story is authentic, and was compiled by Miss Eula Mae Stratton, employed in the Springfield General Office.

Before the turn of the century, so the old timers say, Mr. G.H. Nettleton, then Vice-President of the railroad (which was then known as the old KCM&B) was making an inspection tour of the system. The train pulled into the station of Neosho, Mo., (some old timers say it was Carthage, but most historians say it was Neosho), with the private car stopping in view of the west end of the depot building on which was tacked a coon hide to dry.

When Mr. Nettleton saw the coon hide, he immediately summoned the agent (Sam Albright, so the story goes)…to the business car.

“What’s that thing tacked onto the depot?” roared the Vice-President…”and just why are we using company property for tanning hides?”

We are told that Sam, not a soft-spoken man anyway, and a very busy railroader, told the Vice-President that it was hard to support a family on the $1.25 per ten hour day railroading, and that he was catching, tanning and selling coon hides to supplement his salary.

“Don’t you know railroading comes first?” said the Vice-President, and then to Sam’s surprise the Vice-President grinned and said…”Well, having a hobby is OK. How much will you take for that coon skin?”

The story goes that Sam was so startled that he blurted out…”Two bucks.”

And the deal was closed, leaving Sam in wonderment as to what on earth the official wanted with the pelt.

But it was not long afterward until an ink outline of the tightly stretched coon hide began to appear on Frisco drawing boards in the General Office Drafting Room in St. Louis, but instead of hanging up-and-down, the hide was turned horizontally.

Since the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway is made up of a number of smaller roads, some of which were — the old Southwest Branch, the Pacific Railroad, the KCM&B and others, with General Offices in St. Louis (and at one time before the Civil War the Frisco and Santa Fe operated jointly into San Francisco, Calif) it was only logical to combine the “F R” from Francisco,…the “I S” from the latter part of St. Louis, and the “C O” for Company, which produced…

F R I S C O

[which was] inserted inside the coon skin outline.

Early in 1900 many documents carried the emblem and in 1904, the time cards came out with the now well known cut.

The emblem is the pride of all Frisco employees, as it stands for service to shippers and passengers in the nine state territory.

(The original coon skin from which the emblem was visualized, is now in a frame in the General Office Building in St. Louis, Mo.)

We were amazed to discover how an iconic logo shape was derived from a stretched raccoon skin discovered by chance on, naturally, a railroad journey. It’s a great example of how you never know exactly when and where inspiration will strike, and how something that might appear to be a “throwaway” or even actively marring your brand presentation just might possibly lead you to something very important. And like all great brands, this one keeps on giving, long after its “death.”

October 31, 1929, just days after the start of the stock market slide that triggered the Great Depression, the early country music duo Darby and Tarlton released a record called, “Lonesome Frisco Line,” presented here via YouTube (crank it up loud):

And while the Railroad itself may be gone, the name and logo live on in the town of Frisco, Texas, a rapidly growing suburb of Dallas, named after the railroad that birthed it long ago:

When the Dallas area was being settled by American pioneers, many of the settlers traveled by wagon trains along the old Shawnee Trail. This trail was also used for cattle drives north from Austin. This trail later became the Preston Trail, and later, Preston Road. Preston Road is one of the oldest North South Roads in all of Texas. With all of this activity, the community of Lebanon was founded along this trail and granted a U.S. post office in 1860. In 1902, a line of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway was being built through the area, and periodic watering holes were needed along the rails for the steam engines. The current settlement of Lebanon was on the Preston Ridge and was thus too high in elevation, so the watering hole was placed about four miles (6 km) to the west on lower ground. A community grew around this train stop. Residents of Lebanon actually moved their houses to the new community on logs. The new town was originally named Emerson, but that name was rejected by the U.S. Postal Service as being too similar to another town in Texas. In 1904, the residents chose Frisco City in honor of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway on which the town was founded, later shortened to its present name.

Frisco Texas water tower

And now for something completely different. Digging deeper into “Frisco” via the Oxford English Dictionary, we discovered that it is also a great, old, obsolete English word meaning, “A brisk movement in dancing; a caper.” Here are the only usage examples given by the OED:

1520(?): J. Rastell Nature .iiii. Elem. — That shall both daunce & spryng‥with fryscas & with gambawdis round.

1566: J. Partridge Worthie Hystorie Plasidas — With fetching frischoes here and there.

1598: R. Barckley Disc. Felicitie of Man — He fetched at the last such a frisco, that he fell downe and brake his necke.

1608: R. Armin Nest of Ninnies — Shee longed to heare his friscoes morrallised, and his gambals set downe.

1675: H. Teonge Diary  — Having taken their frisco, returnd as they cam.

That last one brings us full circle: Having taken our FRISCO, we returned as we came. This train across time is still chugging along, “thinking of those rocky hills ahead,” but it’s time for us to get off.

Connecting the dots

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”
~Steve Jobs

Henry Miller’s Eleven Commandments (and naming)

Henry Miller times three

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.

The Eleven 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.)

Complete commitment in great aims and small

“Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.”
~Charles Dickens

Give it time to become interesting

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
~John Cage.

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

The Beautiful Dogma of Dogme 95

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” ~Orson Welles

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.

The 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.