“The Power, or Folly, of a Product’s Name”
– The New York Times

Dezeen Wire: in her latest article for The New York Times design critic Alice Rawsthorn strikes a blow against the current trend for naming products with confusing, forgettable or misleading monikers.

The issue was raised by a new housing development near Rawsthorn’s residence in London entitled the ‘Avant-garde Tower,’ that Rawsthorn claims has “nothing original about it, nor radical, provocative, subversive or any of the other qualities associated with the avant-garde.”

In a brief summary of the history of product naming, Rawsthorn describes the rationale behind memorable titles such as Concorde and laments the bizarre use of punctuation in product names such as the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Th!nk electric vehicles.

See links to more articles by Alice Rawsthorn here.

Back to Dezeenwire »
Back to Dezeen »

Read more

• News