Naming,
voices of creativity
Naming wasn’t a surface detail. It came early, and it stayed. I kept coming back to it. Not as branding, but as a question. What does this platform want to hold? What does it need to say before anything else has been said?
I knew the name had to do more than label. It needed to carry weight. To feel clear, but still open. To name the work without narrowing it. Naming, in this context, was not separate from the design process. It was part of it.
I tried different directions. Some names were abstract and clean. Division of Voice. Their Masters Voice. They sounded memorable, but felt thin. Others were more descriptive. A Creative Voice. Unheard Creativity. Hear Us Now. They explained the project, but flattened its emotional register. A few leaned poetic. Unheard Voices. Hear Us Now. Slightly unfinished. These lingered for a while, then faded. The list kept shifting.
I tested each one aloud. I asked how it sat when spoken. I paid attention to the tone it set. Some names invited curiosity. Others felt too closed. Too polished. Too sure of themselves. Eventually, Voices of Creativity stayed. It didn’t overreach. It said enough. It named voice, creativity, presence. But it left space. It pointed toward something collective. Something open. Something shared.
The decision wasn’t only about rhythm or tone. It was about alignment. With the stories. With the people who spoke them. With the kind of listening I wanted the platform to hold. Once the name settled, I registered the domain. Not as a strategy. But to protect a small digital space. A place for the work to live, if it needed to live beyond the thesis. I rewrote the project description to match the name. Removed anything that felt off. I kept returning to it. Does this reflect the tone of the platform? Does it hold the values with care?
Naming became a way of checking the structure. It shaped more than the title. It shaped how the project was spoken about. How it would be shared. How it would be remembered. The name isn’t decoration. It’s the first word someone hears. And in a project about voice, that first word carries weight.
Naming theory describes the act of naming as arbitrary, but not without consequence. Saussure (1916) reminds us that the signifier and the signified are not naturally connected. They are linked by usage. By culture. But once chosen, a name becomes a frame. A threshold. A set of expectations.
Roland Barthes (1967) adds that names operate through connotation as much as meaning. They signal cultural values. Voices of Creativity may be simple on the surface, but it carries a tone. It invites participation. It avoids hierarchy. It suggests that creativity is something spoken, not just shown. That voice is more than sound. It is presence.
Stuart Hall (1997) sees naming as part of cultural representation. A way to locate meaning. I saw this too. The name told people what kind of space they were entering. Not a marketplace. Not a design portfolio. But something slower. More human. More collective. In this sense, naming was also speculative. It imagined a platform that did not fully exist yet. Dunne and Raby (2013) write that speculative design imagines not just objects, but possibilities. The name acted like that. It suggested a space where multiple voices could speak without being edited down. It set an intention.
The use of lowercase was part of this too. A quiet gesture. Inspired by Herbert Bayer’s 1925 Universal type experiment. Bayer rejected capital letters as unnecessary. He wanted clarity. Equality. I adopted that same approach. Lowercase typography becomes part of the tone. It signals informality. It removes hierarchy. It creates a space where no one word is louder than another.
Naming this platform became a kind of design in itself. It required reflection. Testing. Care. Each part of the process shaped the next. The name guided the interface. The content. The pace. It was never just a label. It was the start of the structure.
Looking back, naming helped sharpen the work. It asked for clarity. For alignment. It helped me stay close to the original question: what do I want this to hold?
The name doesn’t define the platform. It invites. It makes space. And then it lets others speak.
References
Barthes, R. (1967). Elements of Semiology (A. Lavers & C. Smith, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1964)
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.
Saussure, F. de. (1916/1959). Course in General Linguistics (C. Bally & A. Sechehaye, Eds.; W. Baskin, Trans.). New York: Philosophical Library.
