OBSERVATIONS
FROM THE FIELD

Written for curious people who want to understand what's happening around us.

Written/edited with 0% A.I.

WHAT DOES INTENTIONAL DESIGN LOOK LIKE?

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Intentional design is grounded directly in the unique history and competitive advantages of a brand. One established, the visual identity of a brand when broken down becomes some combination of logo suite, colour palette(s), typography and mayyybe an ownable symbol or icon. With intentional design, these tools become the building blocks that make up what I'm referring to as house codes: think motifs, themes and ideas that show up repeatedly across the brand and become a second, just as critical, layer of value that's subliminally telling your audience the same story. This looks like a brand having a complete toolkit that's not just a limited set of repeatable actions. Instead, it's joining a conversation with something worth saying, not simply repeating what everybody else is doing. Putting categories and pricing aside, Hermes comes to mind as doing an amazing job of consistently being able to reinvent itself while retaining the height of haute couture and never taking themselves that serious, consistently using a sense of whimsical and absurdity in its campaigns since the beginning.

THE STRONGEST NARRATIVE IN THE ROOM WINS.

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While we frame business decisions as logical, rational, strategy-driven; they are shown to be business decisions more often than not get decided based on which direction presents the strongest case, or narrative. A narrative = consumer research identified a blue ocean opportunity; an R&D breakthrough that has potential to redefine the market; and when all else fails, the loudest in the room or with the most data becomes the narrative. Start figuring out the strongest narrative to each specific audience.

TREATING BRANDING AS SYNONYMOUS WITH MARKETING

IS COSTING YOUR BRAND MORE THAN IT IS SAVING.

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Almost everyone in the day-to-day brand trenches I talk to has a challenge that goes something like this, “I’m stuck on a never-ending treadmill. When I started, I believed in the value we would bring to our audience but now I'm [and/or my team] are spending more resources trying to constantly keep up with where the audience is and seeing less results than ever to keep that engagement up.”

Brands of all sizes fall victim to advice that you must go where the customer is and meet them on their terms. What this is missing from the real world is two fold, 1) That real brands rarely have a singular audience; often made up of vastly different types of people and 2) This advice never takes into account what happens when that target audience moves onto a new trend or aesthetic, leaving the brand to either pivot with (yet) a new rebrand, line extension OR start to feel passé and lose

market share.

IDENTITY IS A WORLD.
MARKETING IS THE TOUR GUIDE TO THAT WORLD.

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Visual identity, when executed successfully, is an open doorway into an ever-expanding world of a brand's values and what it offers its audience.

I like to think of Marketing like a tour guide to the world created through the brand's identity, taking your audiences to the most valuable parts you want to them to learn about and take away from.

Marketing that tries to double as brand identity often ends up feeling like the theme park ride version of this experience. It's going through the motions of what the audience wants but feels one-dimensional without depth or substance. It's a performance, leaving no place for people to experience the magic of what makes you unique in the first place.

WE'RE REDISCOVERING THE VERNACULAR

AFTER ABANDONING IT FOR THE GLOBAL.

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Language matters. More specifically, language with whom we're communicating to matters if we want to make a connection. A shift towards globalization as well as social media has essentially flattened our sense of geography, This has started to erase how we talk to specific audiences because whenever we're trying to talk to everybody, we end up doing so through generic, stripped-down and all-encompassing language. And the more we try to speak to everyone all at once,

the more often we're going to be speaking to no one at all.

DIGITAL OR PHYSICAL, A CONSISTENT PACKAGING SYSTEM

IS ONE OF THE MOST VALUABLE INVESTMENTS FOR

BRANDS CONFIDENT IN WHAT THEY OFFER.