Brand Naming
TK
Medium, a legacy publishing platform known for its historic archive of blog content, was developing a brand new, flow-first writing app with both AI and social features.
Working alongside art director and secret copy genius Jason Combs, I pitched two letters: TK.
The name is a secret handshake for seasoned writers, drawn from the world of journalism.
These two letters scarcely ever naturally appear together. They stick out as a reminder when a writer intends to come back and augment, fix, or TKTKTK their copy.
It’s a placeholder—the perfect symbol for writing that’s perpetually in progress.
Ellora
Crescent Canna was adding a bright and citrusy THC-infused elixir to their portfolio.
Beloved for their seltzers and gummies, Crescent Canna wanted to branch out into the world of spirit alternatives, and this potent product would sit proudly on the brand’s top shelf.
Looking to the world of Italian amari for inspiration, I combined the beloved conversation starter “allora” with the first syllable of “elevate” to create a name that feels both immediately familiar and plausibly historic.
Since its release, Ellora has won multiple awards, including VICE Editor’s Choice and the 2025 Platinum High Spirits Award for Infused Spirits.
Cortex™
Baltimore Air Coil needed a strong name for their cutting-edge, patented immersion cooling system. So they contacted my friends and collaborators at Banner Day.
Since the tech was responsible for keeping some of the smartest tech in the world up and running, I offered up a decidedly brainy option: Cortex—the protective layer that shields plants and organs including the brain.
The name also happened to contain two lovely echoes: cor (Latin for heart, a nod to the system’s importance) and τέχνη (Greek for craft or skill).
The name stands beautifully along the rest of BAC’s portfolio, shoulder-to-shoulder with words like COBALT™, Vertex®, and Nexus®.
Missions and Visions
Net Health
The world of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) can be an overwhelming one—often demanding that clinicians spend more time with paperwork than with patients.
As a result, EMR software often markets itself through language about ease of use and time saved.
But what lies deeper than that?
After dozens of interviews, I was able to distill the real promise of Net Health’s streamlined ecosystem of software: that it helped all caregivers (doctors, nurses, and assistants) meet the requirements of their job in order to serve their vocation.
See more at Matchstic.
10 Tampa Bay
In 2020, 10 Tampa Bay was a CBS affiliate without a strong reputation—despite their lofty ambitions of depth and truth-telling.
The Matchstic team flew down to Florida and distilled a distinct rallying cry for an organization determined to tell stories in a new way.
Can I nerd out about this tagline for a second? If you say it out loud, you can hear the syllables for the station’s parent network. See Beyond the Surface. Pretty neat, huh?
KWI
A beloved Atlanta-based PR and Change Management firm, KWI needed to talk about themselves for once.
While their competitors were busy making noise about Artificial Intelligence, I pushed their leadership team to take another tack and celebrate the wisdom in the room. While “insights” were about to become cheap, their hard-won experience couldn’t be faked by any algorithm.
While the phrase “Change wisely” won out and became the centerpiece for the brand, you can see an enthusiastically adopted brand messaging strategy all over their website.