Margins
Notes from the margins.
31 short essays on the operational reality of brand and go-to-market work, the same discipline underneath different regulations, buyers, and rituals.
31 essays · 6 years · 5 themes
- 01Craft 2026
Polish Got Cheap
When the machine can make anything flawless in seconds, flawless stops signalling care. The rough, human edge becomes the expensive one.
- 02Branding 2026
The Mark Is Not the Brand
Branding is what you make. Brand development is what compounds. They get sold as one thing and priced like one, which is exactly where it goes wrong.
- 03Strategy 2026
What the Machine Cannot Position
The machine can make the logo, the copy, and the campaign. It cannot make the decision underneath them, or sign its name to it.
- 04Branding 2026
The Loudest Colour, and the Empty Around It
Pantone's colour of the year is a weather report for the culture. In 2026, for the first time in its history, it forecast white.
- 05Craft 2026
The Feeling Is the Function
A brand that only informs gets compared on price. One that also makes you feel something gets chosen. The feeling is not the garnish, it is the mechanism.
- 06Craft 2026
The Grammar of Marks
Wordmark, monogram, symbol, emblem: these are not styles you pick by taste. Each is a grammar, and each fits a different strategic situation.
- 07Strategy 2026
Positioning You Can Click
A brand's promise is not what the homepage says. It is what the third click feels like.
- 08Craft 2026
What Your Type Says Before Your Copy Does
The typeface speaks first, and it has usually finished speaking before the reader has taken in a single word.
- 09Branding 2026
Repaint, or Just Bored?
Most logo redesigns solve the designer's boredom, not the business's problem. There are real reasons to redraw a mark. Fatigue is not one of them.
- 10Craft 2026
How a Mark Actually Gets Made
A logo is not drawn. It is argued into existence, then tested until only the surviving form is left standing.
- 11Branding 2026
Design Wisdom and Principles of Good Design
What Dieter Rams and Herb Lubalin agree on, and why it decides brand work.
- 12Craft 2026
Why the Best Logos Are Built for the Worst Conditions
The mark is designed for the favicon and the valve stamp long before the billboard.
- 13Strategy 2026
Why Price Is the Loudest Thing a Brand Says
The number on the quote is a positioning statement the finance team wrote by accident.
- 14Branding 2026
Why Clients Credit Their Market and Not Your Brand Work
The deepest equity a brand builds is the lift nobody attributes to it.
- 15Craft 2026
How AI Briefs Are Replacing Mood Boards in Identity Work
When the deliverable shrinks from a board to a paragraph.
- 16Strategy 2025
Why Senior Brand Strategists Decline More Pitches
The quiet discipline that separates positioning from output.
- 17Craft 2025
How AI Summaries Are Flattening Brand Voice
The copy that goes unread because the machine read first.
- 18Marketing 2025
Which Marketing Tactics Will Not Survive Zero-Click Search
The plays that age out when discovery stops being a click.
- 19Strategy 2024
How to Build a Brand When the Buyer Is a Procurement Algorithm
The identity that qualifies itself, written for two audiences.
- 20Craft 2024
AI in the Branding Workflow, One Year In
The model in the loop, and the loop that did the changing.
- 21Strategy 2024
Why Brand Maturity Stalls at Stakeholder Alignment
The six stakeholders, and the two decisions that move the work.
- 22Marketing 2023
Why Go-to-Market Decks Fail Without a Channel Map
The strategy nobody can execute because nobody walked the channel.
- 23Craft 2023
The Modern Brand Studio's Tool Stack, Reconsidered
The shrinking surface area between strategy and design.
- 24Bizdev 2023
Why Marketing Pipelines Turn Into Graveyards
The pipeline as memorial, the forecast as wishful thinking.
- 25Bizdev 2023
Working With Founders Who Communicate in Logos
The founder who thinks in marks, and the strategy underneath.
- 26Branding 2022
How to Run a Brand Audit Without Ceremony
The quiet review a small team can run in an afternoon.
- 27Bizdev 2022
Why the Pitch Deck Still Runs Business Development
The deck that refuses to die, and what it signals.
- 28Branding 2022
When a Rebrand Makes Things Worse
The rebrand nobody asked for, and what it cost.
- 29Strategy 2021
Why Market Entry Fails at the Last Mile
The plan that ends exactly where the distributor begins.
- 30Branding 2021
Why Most Brand Guidelines Fail as Deliverables
The style guide mistaken for a discipline.
- 31Bizdev 2021
How to Run Client Check-Ins That Actually Work
The status call that left the room and got quieter.
