what is with the name “DiZMAJiZ”

4 years old is my earliest memory of drawing. I recall watching my cousin Tony draw [he’s a few years older] when he would visit. I tried to draw like him but he was far to talented to replicate. As much as I tried and failed,  I knew since then that I wanted to draw “forever”. So everyday in APT 13c, I would practice. As I grew older and got better, I started thinking I could sell what I was drawing. It would take 10 years to get my first “pay day” but sure enough by age 14, I got paid for the first time for something I had drawn. That one project opened the flood gates.

Now that I had proof that I could earn some money with my graphics, my thought process was to have this company which would embody all my ideas and concepts. My very first thought for a company name was “MY WORLD”. I ran with it but I was bored with the name extremely fast as it was generic and lacked creativity.The next name in line was “Imagination” [yeah, real unique huh?]. I really wanted to use imagination however after some research, I found too many companies with the same name or derivatives like “Imagine”, “Images”, etc.  So I was stuck trying to figure out how to convey “my imagination” in my name some how. So the quest for the name continued.

SPIT, DIZNEE, DiZ-MA-JiZ

Growing up in my projects, everyone had a nickname aside from their “government” name. My mom nicknamed me “Mickey” because she said I reminded her of mickey mouse when I was born. One day a good friend of mine named “Spit” and I were in the chinese restaurant. He says to me “Mick you’re one of the only ones out of all of us [about 75 – 100 guys] who doesn’t have a nickname”.  I responded with “I’m good”. As we stood  there waiting for our food , he yells out “I got it”…. “DISNEY”! I look at him and he says “you’re always wearing “mickey mouse” clothing, your name is Mickey, so Disney. “DISNEY”!

The minute he said it, my imagination took off. Idea after idea filled my mind. I rushed home to get to a pencil and paper. The first thing I did was change the spelling. I was never going to “bite” [old school slang for copy] and have it spelled like Disney (Walt), so I spelled it DiZNEE. I came up with the shorter version of “DiZ” and everyone took to it immediately. Armed with my new name, made me think of my company name issue. So I thought, what if I morphed my nickname “DIZ” with “IMAGINATION”. Imagination was too long so I chose “images” and started playing with “Diz + images”.   I repeated them over and over but it still wasn’t “flowing” right to me. This let me know it was a matter of being creative with the spelling. So I broke down the word “images”, which sounded like i-ma-ges or eh-ma-jiz. , combined my nickname and I ended up with DiZ-MA-JiZ.

And now you know the origin of DiZMAJiZ.