Brand
Naming, voice, identity systems — and what actually happened after the guidelines shipped.
Naming features and tiers: clarity beats poetry at checkout
Feature names and pricing tiers live in the hardest-working UI you own. Rules for naming what your product does so users buy faster and support sighs less.
The logo is dead; long live the identity system
The standalone logo died when surfaces multiplied and motion became default. What replaced it isn't a smaller logo — it's an idea designed to survive every context.
When the founder IS the brand (and when to stop)
Founder-led brands convert brilliantly and scale terribly. How to harvest founder voice into systems, manage the handover, and spot personality gone toxic.
The minimum viable brand: what pre-seed founders actually need
Pre-seed founders don't need a rebrand budget; they need three artefacts and the discipline to use them. What to buy now, what to fake, and when to invest.
Packaging thinking for brands that live on screens
Digital brands still fight for shelf presence — the shelf just became glass. What packaging teaches app icons, social avatars, favicons and the 32-pixel identity problem.
Brand colour beyond default blue
How to choose brand colour with intent: category colour maps, distinctiveness vs convention, accessibility as a brief, and testing colour in the wild.
Rebrand announcement day: theatre, then receipts
Launch day for a rebrand is a narrative event and an operational stress test. How to script the reveal, survive the hot takes, and when the case study actually lands.
Naming across borders: the checks that save you later
A name that sings in Sydney can stink in Singapore. Linguistic screens, trademark classes, domain realities and the false friends that kill product names.
Voice charts: making tone teachable
Adjective lists don't teach tone; charts do. How we build voice guidelines that survive handover: axis sliders, rewrite tables, error-state voice and real-copy audits.
Type as brand: when the typeface is the logo
Retail fonts, custom type, and the maths in between. How we decide when letterforms should carry a brand — and how to make typography do a logo's job.
The 90-minute brand audit: our scoring sheet, free to steal
A structured 90-minute brand audit any team can run this afternoon — consistency sweep, voice sampling, asset inventory — with our actual scoring sheet.
Icon systems: the quietest, hardest-working brand asset
Icons do more daily brand work than your logo. How to design an icon system: grids, metaphor consistency, custom vs library, motion rules, and style guides that survive.