Naming a studio: what we got right (and wrong)
Naming this studio took longer than the first three client projects. Here is what survived the process.
Naming the studio took longer than our first three client projects. Some of what we learned is generalizable.
What we got right
Made up a word. "Explainerium" doesn't mean anything in any language we checked. That seemed like a problem at the time - search-engine wise, conversation wise. It turned out to be the best decision we made. No competing brand. Easy to spell once it lives in someone's head. The first hit on Google forever.
What we got wrong
Hyphenated the domain for the first six months. "explain-erium-studio.com" was technically available. We bought it. Nobody could spell it out loud. We migrated to .co inside a year and the hyphen-domain still gets typo'd into the wrong inbox.
What didn't matter
Whether the name "made sense." Founders agonize over this. We did. The truth is, brands give names meaning, not the other way around. "Apple" doesn't mean computers. "Stripe" doesn't mean payments. They mean those things now because the brand made them mean those things.
Pick a name that's available, ownable, pronounceable, and doesn't already mean something embarrassing in another language. Ship.