Ordinary labels
Why a familiar word can be the most considered choice.
A label has a small job and a large audience. It needs to be understood quickly by people who arrive with different habits, levels of attention and amounts of context. That makes ordinary language a surprisingly demanding material. The most familiar word is not always the right one, but novelty is rarely a useful goal by itself.
When I review a navigation system, I try reading the labels away from the page. A clever phrase can feel obvious beside a large illustration and become mysterious in a menu. The surrounding design had been doing the explanatory work. A good label should survive at least a little separation from that context. It does not need to say everything, but it should point in a recognizable direction.
This is why I like testing labels in a sentence. If you wanted to find your saved essays, where would you look? If the label cannot fit naturally into the answer, it may be asking the reader to learn the interface's private vocabulary. Sometimes a specialized term is necessary. When it is, the product should introduce it deliberately rather than assume that everyone arrived knowing it.
There is room for personality elsewhere. A project description, a welcome note or an editorial heading can carry a distinctive voice. The controls that help someone move through the experience can remain plain. Consistency is not the absence of character. It is a kind of courtesy: the same action receives the same name, and the person can spend their attention on the thing they came to do.
The ordinary label is often the result of several rejected alternatives. It can look effortless because the debate has disappeared from the surface. That is a good outcome. The reader does not need to admire the wording. They need to know where the link will take them, and then arrive somewhere that keeps the promise.