What is the 'John Doe' of company names and logos?

Question

I need to communicate a instruction about a technique converting a company name into a logo. I don't want to show real world examples. Because it needs to be obvious that the person following the instruction can do the same to his company name and logo.

I'm searching for a placeholder like 'John Doe', 'www.example.tld', ' Timbuktu', 'foo', 'bar' but than for a company name. This placeholder name will also be displayed in the instruction as logo (symbol). There has to be a strong relation between the placeholder (string) and logo (symbol).

I'm looking for a fictional company name that will trigger strong visual associations.

Answer 1

As in my comment, I do not think I entirely understand you Q, but what you are after are names for fictional companies that have a strong visual impact.

Strong relation between the fictional name and logo? That is what logo design is for; the company name is not chosen as such.

The all-time classic fictional company is Acme Corporation.

Cinema and literature are full of fictional companies, here are some classics:

• Sirius Cybernetics (The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy)
• Wonka Industries (Charlie and the chocolate factory)
• Tyrell Corp. (Blade runner)
• Nakatomi Trading Corp. (Die hard)

Answer 2

The Wikipedia Article "Placeholder Name" has a section for "Companies and organisations", which includes the following:

"Ace" and "Acme" were popular in company names as positioning words in alphabetical directories. They were generic, laudatory of whatever products they were used to promote and appeared at the beginning of most alpha-sorted lists. The Acme Corporation of cartoon fame is one placeholder example.

"Mum and Pop" are occasional placeholders for the individual owners of a generic, very small family business Main Street or High Street for the business district of a small town or village, often contrasted as a commercial business entity against Wall Street as the financial market of New York City.

"Advent corporation" is a term used by lawyers to describe an as yet unnamed corporation, while legal incorporation documents are being prepared. In case of Advent Corporation, founder Henry Kloss decided to adopt this placeholder name as the formal legal name of his new company.

Fictional brands such as Morley (cigarette) are often used in television and cinema as placeholders to avoid unintended product placement.

Answer 3

The classic product of such fictitious organizations is the Widget, and there is at least one well known incarnation of the Widget, so there's your visual association. Adding the word 'Widget' to the company name makes the resulting logo almost obvious.

Answer 4

One can never go wrong with Umbrella Corporation (from Resident Evil) They even have a very official and friendly looking corporate website and all http://www.umbrellacorporation.net/. It also looks much less "game oriented" than other alternatives, so Umbrella will have you covered...

Answer 5

There are several listed here: List of Saturday Night Live commercial parodies

Answer 6

If you're ever going to make it into a URL or wind up tying it to one, the IANA reserved example.com and example.org, and some language variants thereof:

http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved

So if you need to be boring and corporate and avoid legal problems or someone clicking and getting more than they may have bargained for, call it Example Corporation with "visit us at example.com"

But if you have the liberty to be amusing, making the examples funny can make life more fun for you and your audience. Why be generic when you could slip in an inside joke, all things being equal?