Brand
Naming, voice, identity systems — and what actually happened after the guidelines shipped.
The annual report as a web moment
The annual report is the year's biggest brand surface, usually wasted as a PDF. Structure the story, keep the data honest, ship it as a web moment.
Sonic branding for studios without a jingle budget
Lightweight sonic identity without the six-figure jingle: the three-moment rule, UI sound principles, accessibility defaults, and one commissioned motif.
Will your logo survive your product?
Identity work gets judged at 16 pixels. Favicons, avatar crops, dark surfaces, motion restraint, and the logo-usage contract that keeps engineers on side.
The trademark reality check your naming process needs
The thousand-name funnel from brainstorm to survivor: linguistic screens, trademark classes, domain compromise positions, app-store collisions, graceful exits.
Naming a company: our process from blank page to trademark
One naming engagement, told end to end: the brief that framed it, the 340 candidates, the screening gauntlet, and how 'Meridian' survived to become the name.
Testing brand voice on people, not vibes
Vibes aren't evidence. Test brand voice on real people with comprehension checks, cloze deletion and the 'could a competitor say this' filter.
Employer brand: write the job ad your team would share
Employer brand isn't a perks page — it's the gap between the hiring story and the studio floor. Write job ads your own team would forward, with receipts.
Brand is the small moments: gestures worth systemising
Your brand lives in invoice footers, app icons and 404 pages more than in any campaign. A gesture audit method, what to polish, and the upkeep cost of whimsy.
Employer brand: your careers page is a brand page
Your careers page is the most-read brand page nobody designed. Photography policy, salary transparency, voice parity, and the metrics that prove it works.
Brand photography without the five-figure shoot
Big photography energy on a real budget: shot lists written like screenplays, a lighting language not a filter, and a library that doesn't age in six months.
Brand voice in the bad moments: errors, churn and apologies
Brands break character exactly when character matters. Voice principles for error states, downtime, price rises, cancellations and apologies that aren't theatre.
Co-branding without the mush
Partnership branding without the logo soup: hierarchy rules, lockup maths, shared-palette strategy, and the pre-nup questions that prevent ugly co-brands.
Brand voice that survives the handover: writing guidelines people use
Most voice guidelines die at handover to a busy marketing team. The fix: decide who's protecting the voice, write for the rushed reader, and test in 15 minutes.