Crowdspring’s Naming Creative, shaunda
It’s not easy to name a new company or product.
During the brainstorming process, you may think you’ve found the perfect name only to learn that name already belongs to someone else.
Perhaps you’ve considered turning to a naming consultant, only to learn it costs tens of thousands of dollars – a fee most businesses can’t afford.
All businesses should have access to affordable, high-quality company naming services. (For more on naming, read Why and How to Rename Your Business and 10 Tips for Naming Your Startup or Small Business).
We recently spoke with Shaunda Lindsay, (who goes by the username shaunda on crowdspring), a competitive product and business namer, about her experiences working with crowdspring.
Shaunda is one of over 220,000 crowdspring creatives who help entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, agencies, and non-profits in the U.S. and in 100+ countries with professional custom logo design, web design, print design, product design, packaging design and naming companies and products.
Shaunda is a six-year naming veteran on crowdspring, and boasts over 1,400 naming projects under her belt. We learned how she approaches the naming process for heart pump products or for sandwich shops (and just about everything in-between).
The images in this interview are the winning names from some of the projects Shaunda won on crowdspring.
1. Please tell us about yourself.
Hi, My name is Shaunda Lindsay. I grew up in Southern California and Oregon. I’m a down to earth person who loves nature.
I’m also a people person – I work for a small real estate agency and I help name businesses in my extra time.
I’m a mother of four and a grandmother of six.
2. How did you become interested in naming?
I became interested in naming because I love words. I wrote poetry and short stories as a child, and even won an award in creative writing for one of my stories in high school. I’ve always put great thought into naming things. My kids, pets, cars.
Names are very important and deserve a lot of deep thinking. They have to really mean something.
3. What led you to start using crowdspring?
In 2012, my husband was looking online to find opportunities to make a little extra cash when he happened onto crowdspring.
My husband said to me, “Shaunda, you like to talk a lot and you’re really good with words. Why don’t you give the naming contests a try?” I’ve been hooked on it ever since!
My names were not great at first. In fact, they really sucked, because I didn’t understand there was a whole process behind naming someone’s business or product. I think I did names for about 4 months before anyone ever picked one of my names for an award.
If it wasn’t for the people who took the time to give feedback to me after entering a name, I would not still be here doing this. It was through their advising me and telling me when I was doing right, or what I wasn’t, that I was able to understand what they really wanted. Success was found through a collective effort between both the client and myself.
Truthfully, without good client feedback, we namers might as well be swimming upstream. A big thanks to all the great client feedback I’ve received.
4. What inspires you?
Nature inspires me… This beautiful world and all the incredibly unique people who live on it.
5. How would you describe your style?
My naming style is eclectic. I love using Latin… Mythological inspiration… Evocative words… and two words mixed into one.
6. What is the naming process like for you? How do you start?
The first thing I have to do is read the brief, over and over. Then, I have to write the main points down because I’m a bit of an airhead… I need to remind myself over and over what it is they are looking for.
I start putting together some word lists that I think may work and I write those down. I try to find out where they are located. I look up different customs and cultural things that pertain to what country they’re from. I use a lot of word association.
Once I put that all together, I work out at least three different styles of names to enter. One thing I’ve learned is, many times, what the client wants will change over the course of the naming contest. After seeing so many great names from so many great namers, they start to see names that may have a better fit than what they first thought.
So I enter different styles of names and hopefully, they will score my name proposals and I’ll start to understand which direction to go in because of the higher scores.
7. What do you do with your free time?
You’ll find me walking around in the summer in a pair of flip-flops, warring with yard insects, getting my hands in the earth, growing my beautiful plants, trees, and vegetables.
I do a lot of camping, 4 wheeling, and hanging out with friends, playing music around fires in the yard.
This small town I live in has an abundance of Metalheads, and we’re always getting together to get things ready for the 4 Yearly Music Festivals all the bands put on.
8. What is your most memorable project on crowdspring?
My most memorable project was a heart pump project, in which my name was chosen for the award. I mean, who gets to help name a heart pump in their lifetime?
I decided to look to nature and find things in nature that act as pumps. I can’t tell you how happy and honored I was to be involved in the process of naming a heart pump.
Only on crowdspring!
I won’t give the name because I signed a confidentiality agreement.
9. What is your favorite part about working on crowdspring?
My very favorite thing about crowdspring is the customer support. These guys and gals work their butts off.
Any time I ask a question they send me a response within a couple of hours. Never fails – they always reply so quick. You can tell they really care about what happens to the creatives. And I’m not messing about, it’s the plain truth.
Another thing I love about Crowdspring is their credibility.
I never worry if they’ll treat me right, or if I’ll be paid or any of the normal things a person worries about when they work online.
In 6 years of doing this, I’ve worked on several other naming sites, and Crowdspring is the only one I’ve stuck with.
The post An Interview with crowdspring Naming Creative, Shaunda Lindsay appeared first on crowdspring Blog.