Mike Renaud

A charismatic brand includes a dedication to aesthetics. Why? Because it’s the language of feeling, and in a society that’s information-rich and time-poor, people value feeling more than information.

Type specimens are time capsules of typographic history. There is no substitute for seeing them in person, but you can now use a web browser to track the evolution of type design through the pages of over two hundred manufacturer catalogs from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. For years, I accessed these books via an unwieldy pile of... See more

Even back in the command-and-control days of the production line, Henry Ford’s decision to manufacture automobiles was driven by intuition rather than market research. “If we had asked the public what they wanted,” he explained, “they would have said ‘faster horses.

A lot of people ask me for advice on writing presentations. They often think a good presentation has to spring from a moment of creative insight or inspiration. I point them at a quote from the science fiction author Octavia E Butler: “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not.” The... See more