{"id":14543,"date":"2022-06-30T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/muse.international\/?p=14543"},"modified":"2022-07-04T03:09:52","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T03:09:52","slug":"interview-with-maria-cypher-from-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/muse.international\/index\/interview-with-maria-cypher-from-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview With Maria Cypher From United States"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Maria Cypher is the Creative Director and co-founder of Catchword and has kickstarted iconic names like Upwork, VW Atlas, Asana, and Starbucks Refreshers!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Please give us a brief bio of yourself and your creative background.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m the Creative Director of Catchword, a naming and branding agency I co-founded in 1998. Since then, I\u2019ve created hundreds of names, including Asana, Upwork, VW Atlas, Vudu, and Starbucks Refreshers. I also had a prior life as a reporter and magazine editor, and have dabbled in writing children\u2019s books\u2014so it\u2019s pretty obvious that verbal expression is a big part of my life. But I\u2019m also in a band and derive tremendous joy and satisfaction from music (both partaking and listening), which I consider another form of creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What made you become\/why did you choose to become a creative?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>If you feel the creative impulse, I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s a choice. Right out of college, I worked in finance for two years; I liked the concreteness of numbers and neat reconciliations, but it wasn\u2019t creative enough for me. I found myself inexorably drawn to the creative expression of language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tell us more about your business\/company, job profile, and what you do.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I co-founded Catchword in the early days of the dot-com boom. There was a great need for compelling startup names that were available as trademarks and exact URLs\u2014and there were few firms, naming or otherwise, to provide this expertise. Since then, we\u2019ve evolved to work in every sector, including tech, biotech and healthcare, consumer products, and financial services. We\u2019ve also added tangential services like design, brand strategy, and naming architecture. As Creative Director, I oversee our amazing team of namers and our collective naming work product. I also personally create hundreds, if not thousands, of name candidates for clients week in and week out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What does \u201ccreativity\u201d mean to you?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Fundamentally, creativity means coming up with original ideas that solve a problem or bring joy or meaning in some form, but where does creativity come from? To me, it\u2019s about being deeply engaged and curious about everything such that disparate ideas can be brought together in new ways. There\u2019s no creativity without curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">To you, what makes a \u201ccreative\u201d idea and\/or design?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>A creative name communicates the essence of a company or product, sometimes descriptively, sometimes obliquely. There are those creative names that everyone considers creative\u2014catchy, unexpected, bold. But there also can be creativity in concisely capturing a product\u2019s benefits in clear, everyday language that resonates with the target audience. At Catchword, we\u2019re extremely proud of our diversity of naming styles that reflects the diversity of our clientele.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Make sure you read about the second half of our exclusive interviews of Catchword with Mark Skoultchi <a href=\"https:\/\/muse.international\/interview-with-mark-skoultchi-from-united-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maria Cypher is the Creative Director and co-founder of Catchword and has kickstarted iconic names like Upwork, VW Atlas, Asana, and Starbucks Refreshers! Please give us<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[372],"tags":[9,12,382],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Interview With Maria Cypher From United States - Muse.World Interviews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Maria Cypher is the Creative Director and co-founder of Catchword and has kickstarted iconic names recognized around the globe!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/muse.international\/index\/interview-with-maria-cypher-from-united-states\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interview With Maria Cypher From United States - 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