We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Liz Yap. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Liz below.

Liz, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Success is about showing up and doing the unsexy work. We tend to focus on the end result, but not the process. In a past life, I was editor-in-chief of a food magazine. Every month, we had to produce a shiny new issue, printed and bound, out on the newsstands for readers and home cooks to enjoy. The goal was simple, getting there was not. But that’s what success is. It’s not about the big reveal of the cover; it’s about the rounds and rounds of proofs, the thoughtful deliberation of headlines and colors, the fact-checking. Real success isn’t glamorous, it’s about embracing the challenging, often unrecognized parts that lead to meaningful results.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m an editor turned strategist with a focus on brand naming and verbal identity. I build brands through the strategic use of language, through names, copy, tone of voice development, manifestos, taglines.

Naming is my one true professional love, it’s incredibly fun and delightfully challenging. I’m a big word nerd. I’m Chinese-Filipino and I grew up in a multilingual household, and I’ve always been interested in the intricacies of language. I count my lucky stars that part of my job involves making up and finding new words for things. I’ve worked on naming video games, dating apps, beer, pet treats, credit cards, and bakeries. No two projects are the same, I go where my curiosity leads me, and I love it.

My editorial experience is foundational for a lot of my work as a namer and brand writer. A good editor is someone who clarifies and strengthens a writer’s style and voice, and it’s not that different from what I do now. I clarify and distill what a brand values and stands for, then find ways to express these ideas, uniquely and strategically, through language and design—building a brand’s verbal toolbox, from its name to its voice.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Being able to help people see things in a new way. A lot of my work in naming and brand writing is about clarity — making it easier for people to understand and connect to ideas. I’ll never forget a client’s feedback after we took on a complicated naming challenge for their brand. We renamed existing products and created a new naming convention to make both their salespeople and their customers better understand what they offer. He told us, “You’ve rearranged the furniture. The elements are the same, but it’s a brand new room.”

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’m the type of person who wants to keep working on something until she finds a solution, but creativity doesn’t work like that. Some of the most promising names or the most interesting turns of phrase won’t come from sitting in front of a screen for hours on end, willing them to emerge. I’ve learned that knowing when to take a break and go for a walk is key to doing my best work. Analog tools are essential as well—for me, a nice notebook fuels ideas more than a blinking cursor does. It’s less intimidating, too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lizyap.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizgyap/

Image Credits

Black and white photo by Kate Van Genderen