What’s in a Name?

Yes folks – a Shakespearian reference right out of the gate.

As with many other things in this life, the first question tends to be “What the hell do we call it?”

I mean just look at the guys that named all the birds… I can’t imagine what that was like.

I’ve agonized for years in angsty office daydreams over what to call my intellectual and design aspirations… admittedly – even the choice de jour that I’ve ended up with isn’t original on the interwebs.

Marlow.

Who knew there were so many of us? Well I say, good on us for being creatives. I have no idea how many of you I’m related to – but best of luck to all, and I hope that you’re going to wish me the same.

That said – the intent here isn’t to rip off someone else’s name recognition – just my own.

When I was in college? Archiworks. Google search 34,600.

Post college? Flux Design, only to learn that a firm in Milwaukee had the same idea (as well as countless others now). I’m still a fan of their work.

Then there was M+A+D. (Marlow Architects and Design). I even designed letter head and a title block for that one as an intellectual exercise – now its a well-published firm in China.

Minneapolis Era? Well I started a side thing building boutique guitars, custom relics and replicas… Sadly – in my fervor to share the progress of inventing methodology – I somehow managed to teach my competition, and lose out on clients.

The name is still out there, and so are the instruments that I have made.

There was a brief attempt at a tag of “re:make”, as the firm was with was primarily involved in adaptive reuse and later 3D printing & generative design, which led to a graphic exercise and of the ‘re:’ prefix (later to be found in a few of my contemporaries resume cover pages)… which was disheartening and I never did developed that architecture blog…

Watermarked the efforts with ‘JMDesign’ though.

Since then, there’s been dreaming and planning and the occasional evening burned on logos for other creative explorations…

(this last one might still get used if I can ever get a month off to watermark some 30k photos, its my IP – so if you’re going to steal the concept – I’d appreciate a head’s up) 

but it always comes back to Architecture.

‘Mode’ (which I really liked) has roots in physics, music, design and literature. It’s variants also have numerous hits. As does ‘Form’, ‘Nova’, and a laundry list of front-runners for the Noun + Design/Architecture/Studio game.

After some late-night discussion, throwing around ideas and inside jokes (even an attempt at naming something in Simlish…) – it came back to the surname.

To skirt the ‘more of the same’ trappings of a naming convention – I stuck with who I am. Stripped of all pretense, in the hopes that someday may mean more.

(I know family, I know – it already does) 

[That is, unless you’re a fan of Raymond Chandler fictional detectives – but he added an ‘e’ at the end…]

Anyway – this is me. Thanks for getting to the bottom of this post.

John.