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This firm was founded in 1998 in New York as DMD Network; the initials originally stood for Digital Media Design and later for Diversified Media Design. By 2010, the firm had outgrown the name: It now had offices in five North American cities and offered a range of consulting and media services including user-experience design, green-energy consulting, fashion PR, and integrated marketing campaigns that include social-media programs.

There was another problem with the old name: the initials were frequently confused with other acronyms, especially "DMV." This firm is definitely not the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Through a series of interviews and questionnaires, we identified a key theme’Äîthe intersection of innovation and communication’Äîand a list of brand-personality attributes that included smart, agile, intuitive, multidisciplinary, and engaging. The new name would need to sound cool and modern yet also approachable, human, and mature. As for naming criteria, the client had a strong preference for words from Old English like dwell, kindle, and twine. "No names that wound like Web 2.0 companies" was high on the list of negative criteria spelled out in the naming brief.

One concept that emerged from an early exploration was building and architecture. Several of the firm's most prominent clients came from these fields, and the firm itself is an aggregation of "building-block" agencies. From the vocabulary of building and architecture came Post+Beam, a compound name with multiple meanings. Post-and-beam is an ancient form of architecture known for its simplicity and stability, but each of the words has other meanings as well: post a letter, publish a blog post, beam a smile. An elegant and versatile visual identity, in which the plus symbol resembles a stylized human figure, reinforced the name.

Wordworking also consulted on the new URL, recommending the Iceland TLD, .is, for its distinctiveness, availability, and sentence-creating potential. We also advised on the firm's new web content, suggesting appropriate brand vocabulary for the site.

Read a Q&A about the Post+Beam name.