Brand
Naming, voice, identity systems — and what actually happened after the guidelines shipped.
Naming products and features inside a masterbrand
Not every feature deserves a name. The descriptive–invented spectrum, a naming budget against sprawl, and renaming features mid-life without confusing everyone.
Kill the brand PDF: living guidelines that get used
Guideline PDFs rot in shared drives while brands drift. What actually replaces them: living guideline sites with tokens, patterns, versioning and honest governance.
Naming: our field guide from brainstorm to trademark check
Naming is a funnel, not a lightning strike. Our studio workflow: brief axes, generation volumes, screening and pronunciation tests, and committee-proof presentations.
Design logo systems, not logos
A logo is judged at 16 pixels and on an invoice footer, not the presentation wall. How we build tiered identity systems — marks, motion, rules — that survive.
Mascot systems: when the character earns its keep
Most mascots are clip-art wallpaper. Here's how to tell if a character will earn its keep — and the construction, expression, motion and usage rules that keep it sharp.
Picking a brand palette is strategy wearing paint
A brand palette is a strategic decision before it is an aesthetic one. How we map competitors, treat accessibility as a creative constraint, and pick ownable colour.
Refresh or rebrand? A decision tree for tired identities
Is it the logo or the product? Diagnostics that route a tired identity to refresh, evolution or full rebrand — with the cost and risk curves for each path.
The motion layer of brand identity
Easing is a signature, transitions are grammar. Building a kinetic identity system, exporting it as motion tokens engineers use, surviving prefers-reduced-motion.
Brand architecture decisions: house, endorsed, or let go
Branded house, endorsed brands or house of brands — how to choose, what migration costs, the sub-brand rules that prevent chaos, and how acquisitions change the answer.
Rebrand rollouts: the unglamorous crucial middle
Launch day is the easy part. The rebrand rollout plan: asset census, coexistence windows, internal enablement and honest measurement long after the applause.
Type pairing for brand systems: two voices, one argument
How we pair display and text faces in identity work: contrast logic, superfamilies vs strangers, the third-face rule, and testing in the ugliest context first.