In 1976, New York designer Milton Glaser sat in the back seat of a taxi and arranged three capital letters and a stylized red heart into one of the most effective slogans in contemporary branding history. The following year, the Wells Rich Greene advertising agency used the logo —or rebus…

You’ve seen the rules: A company tagline should be a mini-mission statement. A tagline should convey a benefit. A tagline should never use words like not or, well, never. Good advice, right? After all, look at Nike’s “Just Do It”: encouraging and uplifting. Or Disney’s “The Happiest Place on Earth”…

The gold-plated statuette has been a fixture of the Academy Awards ceremony since 1929. But where did the Oscar get its name? There will be scores of famous names at the 95th Academy Awards ceremony at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on Sunday, March 12. But one famous name will dominate: Oscar…

No, not that four-letter word. No, not any of the four-letter words you’re thinking of. The four-letter word is just. And the product being advertised was potato chips. In 1963, the Young & Rubicam ad agency hired the actor Bert Lahr — still remembered fondly as the Cowardly Lion in…

A few years ago I was hired to name an apple. Not an Apple: an apple, the kind that grows on trees. This particular apple was a new cultivar that needed a name to compete against Golden Delicious and Pippin and Winesap in supermarkets. …

The article, by Wall Street Journal economics reporter Gabriel T. Rubin, was a straightforward five-paragraph account of January price increases in grocery items such as eggs, frozen orange juice, breakfast cereals, and instant coffee. Causes included severe weather, an outbreak of avian flu, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, Rubin reported. …

Some madeupical holidays last only one season, like the rare confluence known as Thanksgivvukah, which occurred in 2013 and won’t come around again for more than 79,000 years. …

Once upon a time, in the middle of the 20th century, diamonds were not a girl’s best friend or the sine qua non of a marriage proposal. …

What was the word of the year for 2022? It depends on whom you ask and how you frame the question. Maybe your personal word of the year, after two years of pandemic restrictions, was vacation. Maybe you feel strongly about the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. …