December linkstack
AI names, Peach Fuzz rugs, a year with "The Power Broker," and more.
David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding (and, not for nothing, the person who gave me my first jobs as a name developer), talks about AI nomenclature — he says Microsoft’s CoPilot is “not threatening” and “a very good name” — and using AI to develop names. (Digiday via Ignasi Fontvila on LinkedIn)
As an insult, or line of attack, “colonial” is enjoying a field day. Might be time to rethink “Colonial” brand names as we’ve done with “Plantation.” (New York Times gift link)
What to do with a bug named Hitler? “In which other spheres of human endeavor is anything still named for Hitler?” one scientist said. “The criteria must change and adapt like the rest of society.” (New York Times gift link)
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Soleil Ho calls Intercom’s outdoor ad “the dullest billboard.in San Francisco,” and talked to its creator, Brian Collins of the Collins agency, who says it’s a “thought experiment.” I call it a mistake on multiple counts: too wordy, too unfocused, too easily missed at 45 mph. Save your thought experiments for the thought laboratory. (San Francisco Chronicle gift link)
How did ZZ Top get its name? (Lucie H. Frost on Threads)
I look forward every year to Drew Magary’s Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma catalog, in which he dissects and fillets this anthology of overpriced homewares. This year’s choice phrase: “conspicuously earthwoke.”
Pantone’s color of the year for 2024 is Peach Fuzz, “a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.” (Give that copywriter a hardship bonus!) You can already buy Peach Fuzz rugs at Ruggable.
How experts choose name colors. I named a lot of colors when I was a catalog copywriter, and always loved the task. (CBC)
Tom Whitwell’s “52 things I learned in 2023.” This is cool: “A ‘payola’ guitar is an electric guitar with four pickups and four output sockets, so that 1950s session players could get paid four times while playing one solo.”
Jason Kottke also kept track of 52 things he learned this year. (I may have to start doing this myself!) How about this: “Ernest Hemingway only used 59 exclamation points across his entire collection of works.”
The logo for the USA’s semiquincentennial — that’s “half of 500 years,” or 250 — was revealed in early December. The swirly ribbon motif is “almost an impossible construction,” said designer Sagi Haviv, who told the New York Times: “I think that has an additional level of meaning, because bringing people together today is almost an impossible task, but the result is beautiful.” (New York Times)
I am very much looking forward to this: Podcast hosts Roman Mars and Elliot Kalan will spend 2024 reading and discussing The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s 1974 masterpiece about the life and works of Robert Moses, “who built more structures and moved more earth than anyone in human history. And he did it without ever holding elected office.”
Five words from Worn: A People’s History of Clothing, by Sofi Thanhauser: “A fibershed is a geographically circumscribed region in which fiber producers an processors can join their products, skills, and expertise to produce cloth.” (Wordnik)
On the spread of “inclusive X” in words like “Latinx” and “folx.” (Language Log)
On Word Origins,
lists his 2023 words of the year, including coronation, indictment, and Barbenheimer.James Asher, curator of The Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum, is revealing one word of the year each day in December. His list also includes Barbenheimer, as well as vermin and girl dinner.
(Reminder: My own WotY list is here.)
Happy new year! See you in 2024.
The Intercom people should have looked to the past to design their all-words roadside advertisements. For example, may I humbly offer this succession of signs:
Platform issues
Got you nervous?
Use AI for
Customer service
Intercom