Why is every fake company called ACME?

V0#1: on generic & placeholder names

Welcome to the first issue of Design x Culture. I’m so happy you’re here.

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ACME. Acme. Does that ring a bell? You’ve probably seen it as a generic placeholder for a company name.

You may have seen it on Notion:

You may have also seen it in Google products:

Here is an abundance of ACMEs in a HubSpot demo:

Why ACME? My first hypothesis was…bread.

I first noticed Acme the placeholder from Notion, which is HQ’ed in SF. I used to live in the Bay Area, and knew Acme Bread – I would roam the Ferry Building after work sometimes to nibble on bread and olive oil, bought their bread from Berkeley Bowl, and have seen lines outside of the main bakery in Berkeley. I guessed the two were related – a quirky SF-based tech company paying homage (and offering free advertising?) to a beloved bakery.

After noticing ACME in other digital products, it became apparent that ACME was a thing, perhaps even a best practice.

Those who grew up with the Looney Tunes might recognize ACME from the cartoon. As I did not, my primary exposure has been through tech. Acme Corporation is the ever-ubiquitous mega-conglomerate that made everything, from vitamins to clothing.

Why Acme?

Companies called Acme proliferated well before Looney Tunes. Animator Chuck Jones said in a documentary:

Since we had to search out our own entertainment, we devised our own fairy stories. If you wanted a bow and arrow you got a stick. If you wanted to conduct an orchestra you got a stick. If you wanted a duel you used a stick. You couldn't go and buy one; that's where the terms Acme came from. Whenever we played a game where we had a grocery store or something we called it the ACME corporation. Why? Because in the yellow pages if you looked, say, under drugstores, you'd find the first one would be Acme Drugs. Why? Because "AC" was about as high as you could go; it means the best; the superlative

The first Yellow Pages were published in the U.S. in the late 1880s and became popular in the 1920s. Being organized in alphabetical order, Acme was an attractive name that gave you a spot in the first pages of the book. Think of it as old-school, analog SEO. For an anglo audience, Acme sounds generic enough to cover a variety of industries, and in its original Greek, akme / ἀκμή, it means the peak, prime, or zenith — an auspicious name for any business.

Popular Acmes of the time included an Acme anvil, of all things.

That being said, I’m still wondering, why Acme and, say, not Abba?

Relatedly, here’s a great episode from 99% Invisible on the alphabetical order, about its origins and uses, and importantly, how it’s just one way of organizing information and by no means universal – the 2008 Beijing Olympics organized the order of nations in the opening ceremony by the number of strokes in their Mandarin names, not by alphabetical order. The fact that Acme was favored because of the alphabetical ordering of the yellow pages seems so savvy & intentional, but in another way, completely arbitrary.

Why not [insert company name]?

As a placeholder company, Acme could’ve easily been an effortless “Lorem ipsum company” or “insert company name” or “Company Name” or “NewCo,” though a real but generic name offers more life and helps guide one’s imagination. I remember learning about lorem ipsum as the go-to text-filler in Grade 11 IBDP Design and saw it everywhere in mockups. Now, everything is an opportunity to deliver on user and brand experience holistically, to give you an idea of what you can achieve.

It’s like staging a house. I’m always amazed at how an empty room often looks smaller when bare, and more spacious when thoughtfully furnished. The room feels more alive and invites my imagination to fill in the gaps. A product demo staged with names feels more believable. The Notion page invites you to replace Acme’s logo with yours, to fill their pages with your mission and goals.

At my previous company, Glide, we referred to the home seller as “Sally the Seller” in demos. This is a real estate transaction software for real estate professionals. The alliteration made it a fun and easy-to-remember name in presentations, though not on-brand enough to be in design mockups or marketing copy. It gave me slight Sally Sells Seashells vibes, which seem younger than the average home seller. It sounds more like a young girl – more Zendaya in the Squarespace ad – than someone who’s selling a million-dollar condo in San Francisco.

Questions on my mind

• Is Acme overused? I wonder if its proliferation means its connotation is no longer as neutral as it was intended to be. In my mind, it’s part neutral industry standard in design/ marketing and part tech jargon.

• Is “Acme” as a placeholder company name primarily an American phenomenon? If so, what are non-American instances of “Acme?” Or is this simply “industry standard?” The story of Acme is American-centric (despite the Greek origins of the actual word), and the tech companies I’ve used as examples above are primarily American.

• Should you name your company Acme to take advantage of all the free marketing? Or perhaps its popularity has dulled the name, making it forgettable, and thus a poor choice? Or one could apply a different rule — only if the desired domain name is available.

Real-life Acme spotting

As I was thinking through this piece, I spotted a real Acme in real life! Acme is a New Zealand company that makes coffee mugs and other flat- and silverware: “Basically we're a small bunch of kiwis that love coffee and designing to make better.” I found their products at The Antipodean Specialty Coffee, an Australian cafe near where I live in Taipei.

Here’s the story behind Acme Cups’ name:

Our founder has a great sense of humour and he was inspired by the Road Runner cartoon when deciding on a name for our brand - it is this same inspiration which inspired the cartoons which are scattered amongst our branding. 

– Olivia Deed, E-commerce & Social Media Coordinator, Acme Cups

Doodles like this live on the Acme Cups website

To all the other Acme’s out there

Acme may be a pretend, placeholder company, mere textual staging. But Acme is also very much real, as real as the tasty sourdough I’ve eaten and the coffee mug I drank out of, and as real as these other Acme companies around the world.

• ACME｜Cafe Bar & Restaurant, a place in Taipei (!). It “is an international sourced, casual cafe restaurant in Ximending Taipei. ACME the name is heritage from the former historical building. Meaning ‘the best’. At here, we believe breakfast and good coffee make your days better!”

• ACME MADE, a bag, device pouch, and kids’ furniture company.

• ACME Capital, an early-stage VC firm.

• Acme Bicycle Co., a bicycle studio in Brooklyn and Katonah, NY that repairs and sells bikes.

• Acme Markets, a supermarket chain in the northeast.

• Acme Furniture, a furniture store from a Californian city called City of Industry.

• Acme Publishing Group, a Taiwanese publishing company.

• African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME), a non-profit based in Kampala, Uganda, supporting journalism and mass communication in Africa.

• ACME Film, a film distributor founded in Latvia. It represents Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, DreamWorks, and more.

• Acme, an electronic devices company that makes an odd assortment of headphones, doorbells, smart scales, and more. It’s part of the ACME Group, a group of Lithuanian capital companies, that also owns ACME Film.

• ACME (アクメ), a Japanese band. “The [band’s] name was created by rearranging the letters in the word “ECMA” which was the website known as ecma.tokyo. They moved the letters around to form the name ACME.” Here’s a hard rock / metal song called ROTTEN ORANGE:

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That’s the first issue of Design x Culture! I’m excited to kick off this new writing project and great excuse to talk about design. Thoughts? Feedback? I’d love to hear from you. Use the comment section to spark a discussion. You can also email me directly. Feel free to share with design-minded friends. If you haven’t already, you can subscribe below.