From Naming Nail Polish to Creating Ad Campaigns, Our Brains Come Up With A Lot of Cool Stuff
I will never forget the first time I had my finger nails professionally painted. I was at a friend’s birthday party in the early 2000s. We walked into the nail salon at the mall and our group got pampered for the day. While I couldn’t stand the smell of the salon, I couldn’t wait to go up to the wall of colorful bottles to choose the polish that would be on my nails for the next week or two. I excitedly chose a dark shade of blue and asked the nail tech to add a white airbrushed snowflake (how festive!) to each nail because it was January and who wouldn’t want bright white obnoxious snowflakes on their fingernails to mark winter’s arrival?
Some things change and some stay the same. My love for getting my nails done has stayed the same, but my passion for blue snowflake nails has changed. Today, you will almost always find me with a neutral colored polish on both my fingers and toes, a color that will match almost any outfit I wear. I was recently at a nail salon reviewing the ring of polish colors to choose from and was faced with the tough decision between Italian Pink and Blushing Pink. While stressing myself out about making a final choice, I started to think about the names associated with these colors. Who is the person responsible for naming nail polishes? What makes a color “Italian” and what makes it “blush” or any other descriptive word placed in front of the simple name of the color? Three things came to mind:
- Is this awesome job a real thing?
- I would really get along with whoever holds this position.
- Thank goodness for Google so I can have this question answered immediately.
After a quick search, I found out that there is a such thing. There are a number of different nail polish brands in the world, so I stuck with one that I knew of and have trusted with my color decisions for a long time- OPI. It turns out, naming shades of nail polish colors is a real full-time position! I can only imagine the creativity that goes into naming each shade ever created. The woman behind the very clever OPI colors like Mod About You (a shade of light pink and a personal favorite), Raisin’ The Bar (think the color of a raisin), To Infinity & Blue-Yond (the color of the sky on a sunny cloudless day) and tons of others is the co-founder and brand ambassador of OPI, Suzi Weiss-Fischmann.
Weiss-Fischmann, who is also holds OPI’s art director position, has named each and every shade of polish for the last 30 years! When asked about her inspiration and creative process Weiss-Fischmann shared that she views colors as a way to self-express and takes all things from trending topics in society to the “it” color for the specific season or year into consideration. This instantly made me think about how we at Wheelhouse have to look into the small details of each clients’ industry when it comes to being creative, developing their brand and more. It is a process, one that is unique for each and every brand and advertising agency out there. Whether it’s coming up with the next nail polish color or developing a campaign, our brains are truly amazing.
Oh, and just incase you’re wondering, I chose the Italian Pink.
