Creator Tutorial | How to Name Your Blender Product

Naming your product may be one of the hardest things you have to do—how do you encapsulate everything that your product is and can do in fewer than five or six words? And should the product name be purely descriptive or have a unique, catchy element to it?

Let's take a look at some of Blender Market's top-selling products to get a sense of what works and then go through what to avoid.

Keep it short

Most of the best-selling products on Blender Market have pretty straightforward but still memorable names. At the time of writing this, these are the top sellers:

  • Kit Ops Synth
  • Hard Ops / Boxcutter Ultimate Bundle
  • Auto-Rig Pro
  • Cablerator
  • Fluent - Stressless Modeling Tool
  • Simply Cloth Pro
  • Kit Ops 2 Pro: Asset / Kitbashing Addon

Each of them is four words or less, with the exception of the Kit Ops Asset / Kitbashing Addon. Studies have shown that we're capable of recalling about 7 things with our working memory, and many of us remember fewer than 7. Keep this little fact in mind as you're considering a 10-word title for your new product. Potential customers may not be able to remember more than the first few words, which means they may not be able to find your product or tell their friends about it easily. 

Base it partly on function

You can see in the names of Simply Cloth Pro and Auto-Rig Pro that they deal in cloth and rigs, respectively. The same goes for Cablerator, which clearly has something to do with cables. Fluent, whose function you might not guess from its name, includes "Stressless Modeling Tool" to make its purpose clear. Kit Ops, by putting "Kit" first, references its role as a kitbashing addon. 

Potential customers should be able to look at the name of your product and at least have a vague sense of what it is or does. Slightly different rules apply for models or textures vs. addons, but the premise remains the same. 

Make it memorable

What makes something memorable? Sometimes sounds play an important role, while other times spelling or wordplay can make something memorable. Consider the addons from Polygoniq: Traffiq, Botaniq, and Materialiq, to name a few. The repeated use of "q" at the end of the company name and product names allows you to easily remember the products and connect them as being made by the same creator. Flip Fluids, another long-time bestseller, capitalizes on alliteration with the repetition of "Fl" at the beginning of each word in the product name. It's easy to remember after you read it or hear it once.

Keep it on-brand

If you are establishing yourself as a creator who is making or plans to make multiple products, consider developing a naming strategy. Blender Guru, for instance, has two products under the "Pro-Lighting" umbrella, and two under the "Essentials" umbrella. The names of those products help a customer know what to expect and provide an avenue for them to find other similar products from the same creator. Similarly, the team behind Kit Ops releases related products under the Kit Ops title: Kit Ops Batch, Kit Ops Synth, etc. as well as "Kpacks" that are supplemental to Kit Ops.

Things to avoid

Now that you have some ideas of what to do, let's talk about what not to do.

  • Don't keyword pack your product name. Not only does this make the product preview look messy, but it also makes it memorable for the wrong reasons. Take my humble product, for example, "Photorealistic fruit". I could have called it "Photorealistic fruit apple banana lime orange low poly awesome wow" but that just sounds like a lot of nonsense and, as a customer, I would not have much faith that the product was any good. The place for keywords is in descriptions, categories, and tags. Use those to their fullest and leave your product name clean and memorable for the right reasons.
  • Avoid incorrectly spelled words. When a customer searches for your product, you and they probably both want them to actually find it. Spelling the words in the product title correctly is a simple but important step toward making that dream a reality. And you might say, "But Abby, what about Traffiq, etc.?" That's not the kind of misspelling I'm talking about. I'm talking about typos, like "Photorealistic Friut", that are not a fun branding strategy but an unnecessary oversight.

And that's it! Keep your product name short, memorable, and on-brand, and be sure to include a reference to what the product does. With all these handy tips in your pocket, I urge you to go forth and craft the finest product names that Blender Market has ever seen. :-) Let us know in the comments below if you have any additional tips or guidelines that have worked for you.