Here’s a fun little fact about the nail polish industry you might not know. Turns out they just come up with a really cool name for a color, and then work their way backwards!
Actually, that might not be a hundred percent true. In fact, it’s a bold-face lie that I just thought up. Still, how might it look if somebody came up with the name of a color first, then figured out the important stuff later?
A few days ago, my girlfriend and I were doing our routine grocery shopping when she realized she wanted some new nail polish colors. Man, you should read some of these names. Most are pretty straightforward, i.e. Jazzy Jade, but then you got things like Under the Tuscan Sun. What color comes to mind when you think of the Tuscan freakin’ sun?
The answer: it’s kind of a pinkish color. Huh. I woulda guessed something… sandier.
While she was perusing the dozens and dozens of colors, most of which looked identical to my eyes, a word popped up in my head.
Goo-Rilla.
Now wouldn’t that be a sick-ass name for a nail polish? “Oh yeah, gonna hit the club tonight, but not before I splash a little GOO-RILLA on my fingies!”
So I got a really cool name for a nail polish. But what color would it be?
Well, what color is a gorilla? Well, they usually got black fur, right? But there’s already a ton of black nail polish on the market. What if we shift our focus to a specific kind of gorilla, maybe a… silverback?
But that’s okay. You think silverback, you think silver. Our nail polish can be silver.
We covered the gorilla part of the name. Awesome. But what about the goo part? What’s silver and gooey? Mercury? Molten steel? Those annoying little enemies from Dragon Quest?
What do they all have in common? I dunno, they’re all kinda shiny and glittery. And so will our nail polish!
A shiny silver color? For ya nails? That’d look fresh as heck! Someone get Sally Hansen on the phone, I got the next dozen-dollar idea!
C. Jetson: With One L, Not Two 