Frameworks, observations, and the occasional rant from the mule's mouth
Simple looks easy. That's the problem. A client once looked at a logo I'd spent three weeks on and said, "That's it? Just a circle and a line?" Yes....
Read article →Every Friday at 4 PM, we review the week's video content. Not the work we made. The work we watched. Reels. YouTube. Ads. Anything that caught attenti...
Read article →A creative director once handed me a brief with one sentence: "Make people notice us." That was it. No strategy. No positioning. No target audience d...
Read article →The best editing I've ever done is invisible. I'll cut entire sections from scripts, remove lines from headlines, delete whole paragraphs from manifes...
Read article →A startup founder once called at 6 PM asking for a logo by 9 AM. Investor pitch. Forgot about branding. Classic. "That's impossible," I said. "I'll...
Read article →A client once asked us to fix their marketing problem. We looked at their marketing. It was fine. The problem was their product. We told them. They...
Read article →We once spent three weeks designing custom icons for a client's website. Beautiful, bespoke, perfectly aligned to the brand. Each icon was a tiny piec...
Read article →The hardest word in strategy is "no." Not no to bad ideas. Anyone can reject bad ideas. No to decent ideas. No to good ideas that aren't great. No to...
Read article →I once worked with a writer who showed me his first drafts. They were terrible. Rambling. Unfocused. Full of clichés and half-formed thoughts. "Why a...
Read article →A junior designer once showed me a poster. It was clever. Typography formed an image. Colors created depth. The concept was layered with meaning. "It...
Read article →I worked with a designer who barely spoke in meetings. While everyone else debated typefaces and color theory, he sat quietly, occasionally nodding, s...
Read article →The best creative work I've ever produced started with a brief I ignored. Not completely. The problem was right. The audience was right. The objectiv...
Read article →A client once asked us to redesign their logo in "every major font" so they could pick the one that "felt right." We did it. Forty-three variations....
Read article →I once spent three hours in a meeting to prepare for a meeting. We discussed what to present, how to present it, who should present it, what the clien...
Read article →Every creative presentation has the same moment. The work is shown. The room is quiet. Then someone asks: "What does the client think?" It's the mand...
Read article →Hemingway was famous for what he left out. His icebergs. The 90% below the surface that readers had to imagine for themselves. "For sale: baby shoes,...
Read article →Most people can't tell you why Swiss design works. They just know it does. The secret? The grid. The invisible architecture that nobody sees but ever...
Read article →We shot a beautiful thirty-second film for a FMCG client. Three locations. Two days of production. A cast of five. The lighting was perfect. The grade...
Read article →I've watched teams spend months perfecting work that never launches. Endless rounds of refinement. One more tweak. One more review. One more round of...
Read article →One can always tell when a brief was written by a committee. Page one says we need to increase brand awareness. Page two says we need to drive sales....
Read article →Every creative has experienced this. You sit down to solve the problem. You stare at the brief. You brainstorm. You mind-map. You freewrite. Nothing....
Read article →I once watched a designer spend two hours adjusting the spacing between letters in a headline. Two hours for something most people wouldn't consciousl...
Read article →The best researchers I've worked with don't just listen to answers. They listen to silences, hesitations, subject changes. They notice what people avo...
Read article →Not Monday. Not Friday. Tuesday. Monday still has weekend momentum. Friday has promise of escape. But Tuesday? Tuesday is what you actually are. Tue...
Read article →By the time we've noticed the trend, it's probably over. Not over in the sense that nobody's doing it anymore. Over in the sense that the early adopt...
Read article →Tony the Tiger. Legendary. The Michelin Man. Legendary. That creepy Burger King... king. Embarrassing. There's no middle ground with mascots. They ei...
Read article →There's a special kind of writing that exists only for algorithms. You've read it. Probably today. "Looking for the best coffee maker? Here are 10 be...
Read article →We've all done it. Spent weeks building the perfect brand guidelines. Every color specified. Every font pairing considered. Every do and don't documen...
Read article →If you have to explain why it costs that much, it costs too much. Not too much in absolute terms — too much for what it is. Because luxury doesn't j...
Read article →A sneeze takes three seconds. That's roughly what you've got. Three seconds before the scroll. Three seconds before the next ad. Three seconds before...
Read article →There's a special kind of violence that happens in focus group facilities — the kind with the one-way mirrors and the stale biscuits and the moderator...
Read article →In 2005, everyone told Nokia they wanted phones with more features. Longer battery life. Better cameras. Sturdier builds. Nokia listened. They deliver...
Read article →I've sat through enough logo presentations to last several lifetimes. The agency presents three options — safe, bold, and "the one we actually want yo...
Read article →Our CEO mulls over creativity
Read article →"The details are the design."
On brand and design
"Craft is caring about the parts nobody will notice."
On brand and design
"Timeless beats trendy, except when it doesn't."
On brand and design
"By the time it's trending, it's ending."
On brand and design