don't brand me

Aesthetics. An entire aesthetic world is a lot harder to copy than a visual handwriting or a tone of voice. It also takes longer to develop. Aesthetics is a value innovation form that stems from the brand POV. This aesthetic POV defines who the company is, what it stands for and also what kind of customers it wants to cultivate.

Like many writers before me, I tend to lean on vague hand-waving when the need to define taste, or rather, good taste, arises. A common trope is to use the phrase US Supreme Court justice Stewart famously gave to describe obscenity, a similarly hard-to-describe bedfellow of taste, in 1964: “I know it when I see it.” In design, good taste can be... See more

He didn’t approach color with scientific rigor, but rather he was captivated by its ability to evoke memories and emotions. Red was important to him not just because it carried a bold presence, but for what it symbolized. Red is “the color of the Communist flag, the color that makes a surgeon move faster and the color of passion

It offers what cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito calls a ‘genre of participation’ .There’s a reward if you get the obscure reference: you are in communion with the author; your specific habits and tastes are seen, confirmed, and validated by the knowledge that someone else is watching the same TikToks, following the same online conversations,... See more

Arc is taking on legacy web browsers with design and brand as core selling points. Tools like Linear, a project management tool for software teams, are just as known for their principled approach to company building and their heavily-copied landing page design as they are known for their product’s functionality.4 Companies like Arc and Linear build... See more