London, 1974.

Interbrand did not start under that name. The International Directory of Company Histories, in an entry on the company that runs to 2004, says it was founded by John Murphy, who came from Essex and had worked in the corporate planning and marketing department of the tyre maker Dunlop from 1970. There he was given the job of naming a new product, and the directory says he found the work gratifying.

In 1974 Murphy left Dunlop and launched a product-naming consultancy called Novamark, working at first from his London flat. The directory says he was soon joined by Mike Grant, Dunlop’s trademark agent, who handled legal searches and trademark registration while Murphy ran sales and marketing. Wikipedia’s article on Murphy describes Novamark in the same terms, as a small London company specialising in product naming and trade mark registrations.

The early clients were British. The directory says Novamark created the Prestel name for a Post Office teletext service and was then hired to name the telecommunications business separated from the Post Office, producing the name British Telecom. It also became that company’s trademark attorney, adding legal work to the firm’s naming.

Design followed naming. According to the directory, clients began asking Novamark to take on graphic work as well, and Murphy at first held back because he did not want to compete with the design studios he worked alongside. He changed his mind when some of those studios announced plans to launch naming businesses of their own, and Novamark added design to its services.

In 1979 the carmaker British Leyland brought in Novamark late in the naming of a new small car. The directory says the firm narrowed a long list down to Match, Maestro and Metro, and that the Metro name was chosen; the Mini Metro, which carried it, was introduced in 1980.

A new name for a New York office.

The name Interbrand arrived with a move abroad. The directory says that in 1979, at the request of clients and in particular the confectionery company Mars, Novamark opened an office in New York under a new name, Interbrand, to reflect a shift from naming and trademark registration towards branding as a whole. Wikipedia’s article on Murphy also dates the Interbrand name to 1979 and the opening of that office.

The directory says the New York office depended on support from London in its early years, and that in 1986 Murphy hired Charles E. Brymer, from the agency Batten Barton Durstine & Osborn, as president. It lists further offices in Tokyo and Frankfurt in 1983, Milan in 1987 and Los Angeles and Melbourne in 1988, each offering naming, legal searches and graphic design. In London, Michael Birkin became managing director.

Ownership changed in the 1990s. The directory says that in late 1993 Murphy agreed to sell Interbrand to Omnicom, and its chronology dates the acquisition to 1994. Murphy agreed to stay for a transition period and resigned as chairman in April 1996. Alvin H. Schechter, whose New York firm Interbrand had acquired, succeeded him as chairman until 1999, after which Brymer, already chief executive, also took the chair. Interbrand remains part of Omnicom, and the directory gives its headquarters as New York.

The firm’s own wordmark was redrawn in 2026. The design site Design Compass reported on 4 June 2026 that Interbrand had unveiled a new logo and visual identity, created by its internal team rather than an outside studio. It said the wordmark had moved from lowercase to uppercase letters set with very tight spacing, so that some letter pairs read as a single block.

A naming firm, a valuation method and a wordmark.

A design studio’s name is one of its first design decisions. Some studios carry the surname of a founder, a choice that ties the business to a person and to that person’s reputation. Others pick an invented or borrowed word, which can travel more easily between countries, survive changes of leadership and leave room for the people who join later. Both routes have to work as a wordmark, a web address and a line in a client’s credits.

Because a studio sells the work it does for others, its own brand surfaces are unusual. The studio website is often the main shop window, and its case-study pages do much of the talking: each one sets client work inside the studio’s own grid, typefaces and tone of voice. Job advertisements, talks, social posts and short films about the studio’s process add to the picture.

Offices and partnership structures can also become part of the identity. A second or third office changes how a studio describes itself, and a group of partners or a new owner can change who signs the work. For a designer, the useful lesson is how a studio keeps a consistent voice while showcasing many other brands.

Names, valuations and identities.

Much of Interbrand’s dated work is in names. The directory says the firm named Prozac and the biscuit HobNobs in 1984, coined Slice for a Pepsi lemon-lime drink a year later, and named the Land Rover Discovery in 1988. It also credits Interbrand with the Zeneca name for the life sciences business separated from Imperial Chemical Industries, and the Imation name for a 3M spin-off. Wikipedia adds Homebase and Kaliber to the names associated with Murphy’s time at the firm.

Valuation became a second line of work. The directory says that in 1987 Interbrand announced a proprietary method for valuing brands and carried out a valuation a year later for the flour miller Ranks Hovis McDougall, followed in 1989 by a valuation of the Pillsbury brand for Grand Metropolitan’s acquisition of Pillsbury. It quotes Murphy telling the magazine Brand Strategy in 2001 that there was “a huge buying and selling of branded-goods businesses where what was essentially being bought and sold was brands”. Interbrand publishes an annual study under the title Best Global Brands.

Identity design runs alongside both. The directory lists a corporate identity for Compaq and, in the late 1990s, identities for Nationwide and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Design Week reported on 30 September 2009 that Interbrand had created a new identity for the recruiter Hays, after being appointed in August 2008 following a pitch against Landor; the work added the strapline “recruiting experts worldwide” and an H device adapted for Hays’s sectors. Design Week later reported, in its December 2011 issue, an Interbrand identity for NYSE Euronext, which a spokeswoman described as “an abstract representation of the world”.

After Interbrand, Murphy turned to drinks. Wikipedia says he set up the St. Peter’s brewery in Suffolk in 1996 and led the purchase of Plymouth Gin from Allied Domecq the same year.

For a design guide, Interbrand shows how a firm that named other companies chose a name for itself that describes its trade. Compare it with Landor, a rival in the Hays pitch, and with Wolff Olins, a London studio that Omnicom also owns. For this guide we use cobalt, navy and ink blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Interbrand’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.