Why I Renewed Nameable.org, Passerby.org, Photostudio.org, Mediagallery.org and Studiotelaviv.com
Renewal came around and five names were on the list. All five stayed, and all five are getting sites.
The renewal decision and the build decision used to be separate for me. They aren’t anymore. If a name is worth keeping, it’s worth putting something on, even a small thing, because an empty name and a name with a working site look nothing alike to anyone who lands on it.
Nameable.org
Naming is its own industry. Agencies charge real money to come up with a word for a product, and the people doing that work need somewhere to point. nameable.org says the job in one word. It suits a naming studio, a brand consultancy, a domain tool, or a reference site about how things get named in the first place. The .org reads neutral, which fits a resource better than a hard sales page. The site I’m building on it leans that way: naming practice, trademark basics, what makes a word stick, why some brands get renamed twice.
Passerby.org
I kept this one for the picture it makes. A passerby is the person who walks through your frame, the stranger you notice for two seconds and never see again. passerby.org fits street photography, documentary work, city writing, human interest reporting, any project built on watching people go by. It’s warmer than most single words you can still register. The site is heading toward street photography and short observational pieces, which is what I shoot anyway, so the material already exists.
Photostudio.org
A plain category name that means exactly what it says. photostudio.org covers a working studio, a studio directory, a rental listing, lighting and gear education, or a photography school. Two ordinary words, nothing to explain to anyone. I’m building it as a practical site: studio setups, lighting, backdrops, how small rooms get used well by people without a warehouse to shoot in.
Mediagallery.org
Galleries are everywhere now. Every publication, museum, agency and archive runs one, and most of them sit on a URL nobody would choose. mediagallery.org is the clean version of that idea, and it’s broad enough to hold images, video and audio under one roof. Good for a stock library, a press image bank, a collection put online, or the software that runs any of those. The site starts as a showcase, with posts on presenting visual work properly on the web.
Studiotelaviv.com
Tel Aviv is a working creative city with real studios in it: photo, music, design, film, post production. studiotelaviv.com puts the craft word next to the place, and it’s a .com, which counts for a name a local business would print on a card. It’s the one closest to home, so the site gets first-hand material: the studios here, the people working in them, what actually gets made.
What happens next
Five kept, five in development, with posts going up over the coming weeks. Renewing was the quick part.