Services / Brand & Identity / Naming
A structured naming ladder, 10 candidates to 5 to 3 to the one, for a company, a product, or a program, with the trademark and domain reality checked before you fall in love.
For founders naming a company or product who’d rather get it right once than rebrand in eighteen months.
10 yrs name still running · Mass General “Because”
Naming ladder · final
Mass General Brigham “Because”: named and branded once, still running under that name a decade later.
10 → 5 → 3 → 1
Trademark-checked
name still running
Naming feels like the fun part until you’ve shipped the wrong one and watched it cost you on every business card, URL, and trademark filing for years.
We run a structured ladder (10 strong candidates narrowed to 5, then 3, then the one) with positioning rationale at each cut, so you’re choosing for a reason, not a vibe in a meeting.
We named and branded Mass General Brigham’s “Because” fundraising program. A decade later it’s still running under that name: the clearest proof a name was built to last, not just to launch.
The brief: what the name has to do, who it’s for, and what it must never sound like.
A wide first round: 10+ real contenders, not three safe ones and a joke.
10 → 5 → 3 → 1, each cut with the reasoning written down, not just a gut call.
A reality check on availability before you commit, not after.
Making sure the name doesn’t mean something unfortunate in a market you’ll enter.
The story behind the winner, so you can defend it to a board, a partner, or a skeptical co-founder.
Naming work from the Spark portfolio, and the identity built around each name.
Naming · company name and identity
A company name taken through the ladder, then landed with the identity system built around it.
See the case study →
Naming · fundraising program
The “Because” program, named and branded. A decade later it still runs under that name.
See the case study →
Thirty minutes with a principal: the person who would run the work, not a salesperson. You leave with a straight answer on which service you need first and which you don’t, and nothing starts until you’ve approved a written scope.
The constraints are the creative fuel.
10 to 5 to 3 to 1, each cut argued.
Trademark, domain, and saying it out loud a hundred times.
How the work splits
AI drafts
AI does the first pass
human-finished: the part you feel
AI can generate a thousand names in a minute, and a thousand names is the problem, not the solution. The taste to know which one a person will actually remember, trust, and say out loud is the part that doesn’t come from a prompt.
and counting · a program named once and never re-named
“Spark named and branded the program. A decade later it’s still running under that name.”
Mass General Brigham · “Because” fundraising program
We run a trademark and domain screen on every finalist before you see a recommendation. That means searching registered and pending marks in your classes, checking common-law use, and confirming domain and social handle reality. The point is to kill unavailable names early, while you are still emotionally neutral, rather than after you have already fallen for one.
We run the availability and conflict screen; your trademark attorney runs the formal clearance and filing. That split is deliberate. Our research tells you which names are worth paying an attorney to clear, so you are not billing legal hours on candidates that were never going to survive. You get our screening documentation to hand straight to counsel.
It can generate ten thousand: which is the problem, not the solution. The hard part was never producing candidates; it is killing the wrong ones with reasons you can defend to a board. Our ladder narrows 10 to 5 to 3 to 1 with the rationale written down at each cut, so the name you ship was chosen, not stumbled into.
Typically four to eight weeks for a company or product name, including the screening rounds. Generation is the fastest part. The time goes into the brief, the narrowing decisions, and the availability checks, and into saying the finalists out loud enough times to catch the one that sounds wrong in a meeting but fine on paper.
Less than you think, but more than nothing. An exact-match .com is cleanest, and we screen for it. If it is taken, a modified .com you fully control usually beats an alternative TLD for a company name: people still default to typing .com. We flag the tradeoff per finalist rather than eliminating otherwise strong names on domain grounds alone.
We re-run the round, and it is not a surprise line item. It is rare, because the naming brief does the heavy lifting before generation starts: if the constraints are right, the candidates land in range. We are not finished until it is a name you would put on the building.
It depends on the cost of being wrong. If the name lives on packaging, a trademark filing, a domain, and every business card for a decade, changing it later costs far more than getting it right once. We named the Mass General Brigham “Because” fundraising program, and a decade on it still runs under that name. That is the outcome you are buying: a name that never needs redoing.
Thirty minutes with a principal: the person who would run the work, not a salesperson. We look at what you already have and the surfaces where it is breaking, and you leave with a straight answer on which service you need first and which you don’t. If it is a fit, we follow up with a written scope for the work, and nothing starts until you have approved it.
Logo, marks, color, type and the rules that hold them together, so the brand looks like one company across a package, a deck, a storefront and a 320px screen.
Explore the service →
From a one-pager of colors, fonts and logo rules to a full system with voice and tone. Scaled to how complex the brand actually is, not a 90-page PDF nobody opens.
Explore the service →
Packaging that earns the pickup at retail, survives compliance, and prints clean at production: on a shelf you don’t control.
Explore the service →
Sales flyers, business cards, pitch decks, one-pagers and leave-behinds: the everyday assets your team hands out, all from the same confident company.
Explore the service →
Architecture before identity. The parent brand sets the equity; each child sub-brand earns its own air without diluting the family.
Explore the service →
