What’s in a name? Campbell Hay, OMSE, and GrandArmy share the stories behind naming their studios

In the realm of branding, there are several reasons why deciding on a name for a new company or studio gets just as much space, time and importance as deciding how it looks or is presented to the world. As Michael Johnson points out in ‘Branding: In Five and a Half Steps’ – “Millions of names have already been registered by the hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe, so creating and protecting a name takes a unique combination of different creative and administrative skills.” You’re not only working with/against Google, but accounting for a whole host of factors. Does this name effectively communicate our vision? Will it be understood globally, by clients of diverse cultures and backgrounds? Is the name legally viable? And perhaps most important of all: does it feel right? Digging deeper into the world of language, we consider the value of a name that – at first glance – has no meaning. OMSE, for example, is a London-based studio who decided their name based on their admiration for Scandinavia. Although not Swedish themselves, the studio felt a strong connection to the region. “I’d been studying at the University in Goteborg, where I fell in love with the culture, people, style and overall vibe of the place,” Founder James Kape explains. And, as a major milestone, the company’s first commercial brief was to create a magazine for a Swedish clothes shop in Sydney. “With these two things, and our general love for Scandi design, it just made sense!”