Boldtype Management is a dynamic visual identity and branding project by Aptum Studio featuring ultra-bold geometric block typography.
The visual system relies on a big custom font that acts as the main hero graphic. At the core of the branding sits the word BOLD drawn with thick octagonal block shapes. Designers Aptum Studio, Luca Guerci, Matteo Polla, and Thomas Garaventa pair this heavy font with an electric acid yellow and soft lavender tone. Thin sans serif text adds a sharp look next to the heavy block letters. The layout pairs raw city photos with clean color fields and bold type marks. Every layout gives the letters heavy visual weight on the page. The full branding system relies on high contrast and simple shapes.
Ultra-Bold Geometric Typography and Event Branding
Print and web items extend the brand language to city walls and phone screens. Large street posters use bright color blocks with the line Don’t Be Old, Be Bold. Book covers, hanging art prints, and cotton shirts place the block letters on light and dark cotton fields. Social media post frames display event news with clean image borders. The print choices focus on deep color ink and crisp line edges on every surface. Each piece treats the bold font like a real building block for event promo.
The identity gives event management a new voice that speaks to young crowds. By pairing heavy type with active street photos, the branding creates a clear mood. The full visual strategy links raw energy with clean event layouts. It gives great inspiration for design teams who build brand marks for young groups. The design choices stay fresh on every poster layout. Explore the complete brand identity case study on Behance by Aptum Studio.
Nobody decides to become a brand. It happens anyway, usually messier than you’d like, long before you get a say in how it looks.
Someone Googles your name before a meeting. A recruiter scans your LinkedIn for four seconds and forms an opinion. Lately, an AI model gets asked who’s good at your job, and it either mentions you or it doesn’t. That last part is new, and it changes the math on personal branding more than most people realize.
So here’s the real question. Not “Should I build a personal brand?” because you already have one, whether you manage it or not. The question is whether you’re the one shaping it or whether it’s being written by accident, one half-finished profile at a time.
I’ve spent years building content strategies and watching what actually sticks versus what just looks good in a screenshot. Most personal branding advice is vague on purpose, because vague advice never fails publicly. It sounds motivational and costs the writer nothing. I want to give you something sharper. A working definition, a scoring framework you can apply to yourself this week, a step-by-step process, and a clear picture of why 2026 changed the rules for good.
This isn’t about becoming louder online. Plenty of loud personal brands are, frankly, forgettable within a week. It’s about becoming specific enough that people can actually describe what you do, in one sentence, without your help.
What Does It Actually Mean to Become a Brand?
A brand is not a logo, a colour palette, or a bio that says “passionate.” Strip away the marketing language and a personal brand is something much simpler. It’s a predictable answer to a specific question. When someone thinks, “Who should I ask about X?” your name either shows up or it doesn’t. That’s it. That’s the whole mechanism.
Reputation is what people think of you after they meet you. Identity is how you see yourself. A brand is different from both. It’s what strangers can retrieve about you without ever meeting you, based on patterns you left behind on purpose. Big difference, and it’s the one most people miss.
This matters more now because retrieval doesn’t only happen in a human’s head anymore. It happens inside a search engine, a recommendation algorithm, and increasingly, inside an AI model generating an answer in real time. Your personal brand has to work on all three layers at once. Most people only build for one, usually the layer that feels the most comfortable, which is rarely the one doing the most work.
Think about the last time you needed a specialist. A lawyer, a designer, a contractor, anyone outside your usual circle. You probably didn’t ask around for a week. You searched a name, skimmed a page, and made a fast judgment call. That’s the exact moment a personal brand either earns trust or quietly loses it. Nobody sees the moment happen. It just resolves, one way or the other, in seconds.
The Recall Equity Framework: Three Scores That Predict Whether People Remember You
I use a framework I call Recall Equity to evaluate a personal brand honestly. It measures the likelihood that your name surfaces, accurately and favourably, when someone needs an answer connected to your work. Not how many followers you have. Not how polished your personal brand looks on the surface. Whether you actually get recalled at the moment when it actually counts.
Recall Equity breaks into three sub scores, each rated zero to ten. Add them together, and you get a rough Recall Equity Score out of thirty. Most people I evaluate land somewhere between eight and fourteen. Fifteen and above is where things start compounding on their own.
Distinct Signal
This measures how ownable your position actually is. “I help businesses grow” scores close to zero, because ten thousand people say the exact same sentence. A distinct signal sounds more like a specific claim someone could argue with. Sharper, narrower, and a little uncomfortable to say out loud the first time.
Ask yourself what you believe about your field that most peers wouldn’t say publicly. That discomfort is usually where your real signal lives.
Structural Consistency
This measures whether you repeat the same vocabulary, format, and visual anchor across platforms and over time. Humans build recognition through repetition, not variety. So do algorithms, honestly, and so do AI systems parsing your content for patterns. Reinvent yourself every quarter, and you reset the recognition clock every single time.
Retrievable Proof
This is the score most people skip entirely. It measures whether you have documented, specific artifacts that back your claims: case studies with real numbers, named frameworks, direct testimonials, and structured pages that clearly explain what you do and for whom. Claims are cheap. Retrievable proof is what actually gets cited, quoted, and remembered.
Why 2026 Rewired the Rules of Personal Branding
Four forces collided this year, and together they made personal branding close to mandatory rather than optional.
First, AI search changed how discovery works. When someone asks a model who’s strong at a given skill, it pulls from structured, specific, citable content. Research into how these systems select sources found that concrete statistics and clearly named frameworks measurably increase how often a piece of content gets referenced. Vague, generic writing gets skipped. Specific, structured writing gets pulled forward.
Second, the line between “creator” and “entrepreneur” basically dissolved. Creators now launch product lines, build teams, and raise capital. Entrepreneurs now build personal followings before they build companies, because a following is cheaper to earn than a customer base and often converts into one. Everyone is competing for the same kind of attention, whether they call themselves a founder, a consultant, or a freelancer.
Third, hybrid work quietly removed most in-person impressions. A colleague across the country forms an opinion of you almost entirely from what you post, write, and show up as online. There’s no hallway conversation to correct a flat first impression anymore. Your written voice now carries weight that used to belong to your handshake.
Layer a fifth factor on top of these four, and the picture gets sharper still: workplaces now span five generations at once, each with different expectations for how expertise gets demonstrated. A brand built purely on credentials and title reads as thin to younger colleagues who expect visible proof of thinking, not just a job description on a slide.
Fourth, and this one matters most, AI-generated content became infinite and free. Generic advice, generic headshots, generic captions: any model can produce those in seconds. The only asset that can’t be copied is your specific point of view, built from your actual experience. That scarcity is now the whole game.
How Do You Actually Start Turning Yourself Into a Brand?
Skip the vision board. Here’s a sequence that actually moves the Recall Equity needle, in order.
Step 1: Find the Question You Want to Own
Pick one specific question you want your name attached to. Not a broad topic like “marketing.” A specific question like “How should a solo consultant price a first project?” Narrow it until it feels almost too small. That’s usually the right size.
Step 2: Pick Two Channels, Not Ten
Spreading yourself across six platforms guarantees mediocrity on all of them. Pick one platform where your audience already looks for answers, and one place you fully own, like a newsletter or a website. Depth beats breadth every time when you’re building a personal brand.
Step 3: Build a Repeatable Format
Structural consistency comes from format, not frequency. A weekly breakdown, a recurring case study series, and a consistent visual template. When people recognize your format before they finish reading the headline, you’ve built real recognition.
Step 4: Manufacture Retrievable Proof
Don’t wait for proof to happen naturally. Create it. Write up a project as a detailed case study. Name a process you use, even a simple one, so it becomes a searchable term tied to your personal brand. Ask past clients for specific, quotable feedback instead of generic praise.
Step 5: Structure Your Content for Machines, Not Just Humans
Use clear headings. Answer direct questions in plain language near the top of the page. Define your terms explicitly instead of implying them. AI systems extract clean, well-structured answers far more easily than clever, meandering prose. Clarity is now a distribution strategy for your personal brand, not just a writing preference.
Four Personal Branding Archetypes, Compared
Not every strong personal brand looks the same. Here’s how four common archetypes typically score across the Recall Equity Framework and where each one tends to struggle.
Archetype
Best For
Primary Channel
Recall Equity Strength
Biggest Risk
The Niche Authority
Consultants, specialists, B2B experts
LinkedIn or a focused newsletter
High Distinct Signal, high Retrievable Proof
Can plateau without wider visibility
The Creator-Entrepreneur
Product builders, coaches, course creators
YouTube or short-form video plus email
High Structural Consistency, growing proof
Burnout from constant content demands
The Quiet Operator
Senior employees, technical experts
Internal reputation plus occasional writing
High Retrievable Proof, low public signal
Invisible outside a narrow circle
The Generalist
Early-career professionals still exploring
Whatever platform feels comfortable
Low across all three scores
Nobody can explain what you actually do
Most people start as generalists and stay there far longer than they should. That’s not a character flaw. It’s just the default state when nobody forces the narrowing decision.
What Staying a Generalist Actually Costs You
Staying vague doesn’t feel risky day-to-day, so most people never fix it. But the cost shows up quietly, in every opportunity that goes to someone else because their positioning was clearer at the exact moment it mattered. The client picks the consultant whose page answered their question in ten seconds. The conference picks the speaker whose expertise was easy to describe in one line. The AI-generated shortlist skips you entirely because there was nothing specific enough to extract.
None of this feels dramatic in the moment. It just feels like a slow trickle of near-misses you can’t quite explain. Add them up over two or three years, though, and a weak personal brand becomes one of the more expensive habits in a career, precisely because the cost never arrives as a single visible event.
A few patterns show up again and again when a personal brand stalls out.
Trying to appeal to everyone dilutes your distinct signal until your personal brand disappears into the crowd. Changing your positioning every few months resets structural consistency back to zero, every single time. Posting constantly without a repeatable format feels productive but builds no brand recognition at all. Making claims without proof leaves your personal brand sounding exactly like every other profile in your field. And ignoring how your content reads to an AI system means missing an entire discovery layer that’s only getting bigger.
None of these mistakes are dramatic on their own. Stacked together, they’re the reason so many smart, capable people stay invisible for years.
Where Personal Branding Is Headed Next
A few predictions worth planning around, based on where the current data and platform behaviour are pointing.
Expect structured “brand dossiers” to become standard by 2027: single pages built specifically so AI systems can parse your expertise cleanly, separate from your social feeds. Additionally, expect AI agents to start pre-screening people on someone else’s behalf, recommending consultants, speakers, or freelancers based on retrievable proof rather than follower counts. Expect the gap between people with real retrievable proof and people with only claims to widen sharply, since AI systems increasingly favour the former by design. And expect platform-specific fame to matter less than cross-platform consistency, because the systems doing the recommending now read across platforms, not just within one.
The professionals who treat their name like a product they maintain, rather than a personality they perform, are the ones who’ll still be findable five years from now.
Frequently Asked Questions About Building a Personal Brand
What is a personal brand, exactly?
A personal brand is the predictable, retrievable answer people get about you when they need something connected to your expertise. It’s built through consistent signal, format, and proof, not through follower counts or design polish.
How long does it take to build a personal brand?
Meaningful recognition usually takes six to eighteen months of consistent output in one specific area. Recall Equity compounds slowly at first, then accelerates once your Retrievable Proof score climbs high enough to get cited by others.
Do I need to be on social media to build a personal brand?
No. The Quiet Operator archetype builds strong internal and industry recognition without much public posting. What you need is consistent, retrievable proof somewhere other people can find and reference, whether that’s public or industry-specific.
What’s the difference between a personal brand and personal branding?
A personal brand is the outcome: the actual perception people hold. Personal branding is the ongoing process of shaping that perception on purpose, through consistent signal, format, and proof.
Can introverts build a strong personal brand?
Yes, and often more effectively than extroverts. Written case studies, structured proof, and a consistent newsletter build Recall Equity without requiring constant on-camera presence or networking events.
How much does it cost to build a personal brand?
The framework itself costs nothing beyond time and consistency. Most costs come later, from tools for content production or design, which are optional accelerators rather than requirements for the first year.
Dirk Petzold is a graphic designer, content strategist, and the founder of WE AND THE COLOR. With a sharp eye for visual culture and a deep passion for emerging trends, Dirk has spent over a decade building one of the most respected platforms in the creative industry. His mission is to inspire and connect designers, artists, and creative minds across the globe through high-quality content, curated discoveries, and thoughtful commentary. When he’s not creating or curating, you’ll likely find him running mountain trails or exploring new ideas at the intersection of design and technology. All content on WE AND THE COLOR is human-curated and edited, with AI assistance in research, writing, and image editing.
The ads are often for startups you’ve never heard of selling a service or software that’s somehow related to AI. And while the ad voice is direct, in that it’s written as if it’s speaking directly to you, the viewer, the copy is intentionally cryptic. “Own Your Inference.” “Put AI Agents to Work for People.” Sometimes it’s menacing. “Stop Hiring Humans.”
These kinds of ads seem to be everywhere lately, but that doesn’t mean that they make much sense. Now, comedians Harris Alterman and Dave Ross are emphasizing just how banal and meaningless the AI ad age is turning out to be by creating their own fake tech ads that skewer the medium simply by amping up its tropes: AI industry gobbledegook and design minimalism.
[Photo: courtesy Harris Alterman and Dave Ross]
The ads, which they put up as banners in a New York City subway station (much like the controversial, real ads for the AI companion Friend last fall) ask asinine questions. “What if forks were spoons?,” “What if Texas was upside-down?,” and “What if the Rizzler was purple?” One fake ad is for a company with a human name, “Dennis.”
[Photo: courtesy Harris Alterman and Dave Ross]
Another advertises a faux company that recently rebranded. “Zipline is now Froggle,” the ad says matter-of-factly. “The cloud-based online safety you know and love, now in the palm of your hand.” An ad for a brand called Fivetable confidently states “We Put the Q in QR1777,” and Wireflow promises “you pay us, we pay you.”
[Photo: courtesy Harris Alterman and Dave Ross]
Alterman and Ross were especially inspired by a real ad for the product development software company Linear, which shows cursors pointing toward God’s outstretched hand, as in Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” and another for Dawn, an AI mental-health app, that says “Racing Thoughts Don’t Do Waiting Rooms.”
“People are confused by tech advertising,” they tell Fast Company in an email. “99% of the people reading these ads have no idea what they’re talking about. It feels like 20 people in tech, advertising to 20 other people in tech. Do you really need to put up ads? Can’t you guys just get in a group chat together?”
[Photo: courtesy Harris Alterman and Dave Ross]
That’s how Alterman and Ross made their ads, after all. The comedians wrote them together. Ross then designed the ads in Photoshop and made websites for them using HTML/CSS and Javascript. While their fake ads aren’t for real tech companies, they are selling something. The comedians put up a merch shop under their brand called Goofstump.
Alterman says they plan to make more fake ads, and they’d like to partner with the MTA to make an official art installation. Though they’ve set up websites for some of the parody brands, he says they didn’t pay for all the URLs they’re advertising. The URL for sellyourposessions, for example—”Are You Poor? Sell Your Possessions,” is the tagline—costs about $700, or “a little too much for a joke,” he says. Especially in times like these.
Feature image credit: courtesy Harris Alderman and Dave Ross
Hunter Schwarz is a Fast Company contributor who covers the intersection of design and advertising, branding, business, civics, fashion, fonts, packaging, politics, sports, and technology.. Hunter is the author of Yello, a newsletter about political persuasionMore
Performance campaigns can drive quick wins, but without a clear brand foundation they rarely build lasting customer loyalty.
The Gist
Brand defines the strategy; marketing executes it.Organizations that clarify their purpose, values and narrative first give every marketing channel a clear direction, reducing fragmentation and inconsistent messaging.
Performance marketing alone cannot sustain growth.Companies that focus primarily on acquisition tactics often compete on price or features, weakening loyalty and long-term customer retention.
Strong brands multiply marketing ROI.Clear brand identity aligns teams, simplifies campaign decisions and strengthens customer trust, turning each marketing investment into a longer-term relationship builder.
The pressure on CMOs to deliver immediate, measurable results has never been higher. With real-time dashboards and attribution models at their fingertips, the temptation to lead with high-performance marketing tactics is significant.
However, a critical question remains at the center of the C-suite table: Does the brand build the marketing, or does the marketing build the brand?
This article examines the fundamental sequence of growth and why establishing a robust brand identity is the necessary precursor to any successful marketing deployment.
For a CMO, the distinction between branding and marketing is the difference between a company’s soul and its voice. Branding is the internal realization of a company’s “why”—its values, its mission and the emotional resonance it aims to strike with its global audience.
Marketing, by contrast, is the strategic execution of that identity across various channels to drive specific actions. Some say organizations fall into the trap of “tactical sprawl,” where marketing activities are launched in a vacuum.
Without a brand anchor, these activities often lack cohesion, leading to fragmented customer experiences and diminished ROI.
The Cost of a ‘Marketing-First’ Approach
When marketing precedes branding, the result is often a high volume of lead generation with a low rate of long-term retention. This “performance paradox” was a recurring theme in recent leadership summits.
Marcus Thorne, a veteran CMO in the technology sector, described the dangers of neglecting the brand foundation.
“We observed companies in hyper-growth phases pouring millions into customer acquisition,” he said. “Because they hadn’t defined their brand narrative, they were forced to compete solely on price or features. As soon as a cheaper competitor emerged, their ‘loyal’ customers evaporated.”
A study by McKinsey & Company highlighted that companies with strong, consistent brands consistently outperform their peers in terms of total return to shareholders.
This suggests that the “brand equity” built early on serves as a multiplier for every marketing dollar spent later.
The consensus among global marketing leaders is that branding must act as the “North Star” for all departmental activities.
This is not merely an aesthetic choice; it is a strategic necessity that simplifies decision-making.
When a top executive advisor emphasizes the efficiency of a brand-led strategy and narrates that when the brand is clearly defined, the marketing team doesn’t have to guess. The tone of voice, the visual language and the target personas are already set. It allows for faster execution and more authentic communication.
The logical progression for a CMO-led transformation typically followes this framework:
Audit and Alignment: Ensuring the internal culture matches the external promise.
Narrative Development: Crafting a story that transcends the product or service.
Omnichannel Deployment: Using marketing tools to amplify that story to a segmented audience.
Practical Steps for CMOs Building a Brand-Led Marketing Strategy
Marketing leaders increasingly recognize that sustainable growth starts with brand clarity. The following practices help ensure branding guides marketing execution rather than reacting to it.
Practice
What It Means
Why It Matters
Establish brand guidelines as governance
Treat the brand book as a strategic filter for every campaign, not simply a design reference.
When campaigns align with clearly defined brand values, marketing remains consistent and avoids fragmented messaging.
Measure brand health, not just leads
Track indicators such as brand sentiment, recall and Net Promoter Score (NPS) alongside conversion metrics.
These indicators reveal how the market perceives the brand and whether marketing efforts are strengthening long-term loyalty.
Ensure the promise made in marketing is fulfilled across product experience, support and service interactions.
Breakdowns between brand messaging and real customer experience are where trust erodes and loyalty declines.
Invest in emotional differentiation
Focus on creating emotional resonance and brand affinity rather than only building awareness through campaigns.
In an environment saturated with automated content and AI-generated ads, human-centered brand identity becomes the key competitive advantage.
Conclusion: Marketing Without Branding Is Noise
The debate over what comes first is settled by the reality of the marketplace.
Marketing without branding is noise; branding without marketing is a secret. However, for every CMO seeking sustainable, long-term growth, the blueprint must always be drawn before the ground is broken.
By prioritizing the brand foundation, marketing efforts become more than just transactions. And they become milestones in a long-term relationship with the consumer through enhanced customer loyalty.
Umesh Panchal, a seasoned sales and marketing professional with over 24 years of dynamic experience, emerges as a visionary leader propelling organizations toward unprecedented success. His robust career spans various industries, including SaaS, IT hardware, education, security, manufacturing and retail, consistently delivering exceptional results.
Tactile design is reshaping branding, packaging, and digital UI with texture, embossing, and material surfaces that make design feel as good as it looks.
Screens have flattened everything. Swipe, tap, scroll — interaction is mostly frictionless now. But a countermovement is gaining ground. Designers across branding, print, packaging, and even digital interfaces are leaning into texture. They are making surfaces that suggest weight, grain, and resistance. They are designing things that feel like something.
This is tactile design. It is not a single aesthetic. It is an approach — a commitment to material honesty and sensory depth. When a brand prints its identity on uncoated stock with debossed letterforms, the paper’s tooth becomes part of the message. When a package uses kraft board with a blind-embossed logo, the roughness and the relief tell a story about craft and care before the product is even opened.
Tactile Design in Branding and Packaging
The most effective tactile design in branding starts with material selection. Studios working across print and packaging consistently reach for surfaces that have presence: cotton rag stock, duplex boards, textured uncoated papers, and natural materials like linen and wood pulp. These choices carry meaning. An uncoated cream paper reads handmade. A heavy coated board reads luxury. Kraft reads honest and sustainable.
Finishing techniques add the next layer. Debossing presses type or imagery into the surface, creating a recessed impression that readers touch without thinking. Embossing does the opposite, raising forms above the sheet. Foil stamping adds metallic contrast while still referencing physical material. Letterpress printing, with its characteristic ink bite and impression, turns the act of reading into a physical encounter with the page.
Tactile Design in Digital and UI
UI designers have long experimented with material metaphors — subtle noise overlays, paper-grain backgrounds, and linen-pattern interfaces that recall physical surfaces. The goal is not skeuomorphism for its own sake. It is warmth. A slight texture on a background removes the sterile coldness of a pure flat surface. It grounds the interface in the physical world.
Haptic feedback in mobile design extends this logic. A well-timed vibration when a button activates does not just confirm the action — it adds a moment of physicality that flat audio feedback cannot replicate. As displays improve and surface materials evolve, tactile design will bridge the screen and the hand more precisely.
The best tactile work understands that texture is not decoration. It is communication. Every grain, every impression, every surface choice sends a signal about quality, intent, and care. The studios and designers pushing this work are not chasing a trend. They are recovering something that flat digital design left behind.
Some of the most controversial redesigns have had surprising staying power.
Over the last few years we’ve seen some truly headline-making rebrands. And if you know anything about the attention economy in the twenty-first century, you’ll know that headline-making equals controversial. Hate sells, and there’s nothing people love to hate more than a beloved brand trying out a bold new look.
Perhaps the most obvious example from recent memory is Jaguar, whose colourful and curvy new look prompted outcry in 2024. And then there’s Cracker Barrel, which angered MAGA (and more) by doing away with its ‘old timer’ mascot’ last year. The vitriol directed at these new identities was on another level, with real-world effects for the brands.
The ‘controversial’ Cracker Barrel rebrand (Image credit: Cracker Barrel)
One one hand, in today’s social media age, perhaps the response to these rebrands wasn’t surprising. Seeing figures like Elon Musk call Jaguar woke or Donald Trump Jr ask “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel” feel par for the course in the 2020s. By removing iconic assets, those rebrands were doing something bold and, yes, possibly foolish – even on paper, a Jaguar campaign without any cars sounds a bit daft.
But the alarming thing here is that these backlashes so clearly cowed the respective brands. Cracker Barrel was publicly contrite about its redesign, announcing on social media, “You’ve shown us that we could’ve done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be” before wheeling back the rebrand. And this is despite the brand also offering a rationale for the new logo that actually made a lot of sense: to simplify the design for new, digital applications.
The response to the Jaguar rebrand has allegedly led to the firing of the brand’s design chief and the dropping of its ad agency (Image credit: Jaguar)
As for Jaguar, to an outsider, the rebrand appears to be going strong – it still adorns the brand’s website, along with the new tagline, “Copy nothing. Delete ordinary.” But behind the scenes, it sounds like the backlash has led to some profound changes, including the design chief being sacked and the advertising agency being dropped.
Now, rebrand U-turns are nothing new. We’ve been seeing brands ditch their new designs in response to controversy for decades. GAP’s 2010 rebrand lasted all of six days, while Tropicana’s 2009 redesign managed a few months. But the difference is that there was nothing political about those backlashes – they were purely about the loss of an iconic design. Both Jaguar and Cracker Barrel, however, were mostly criticised for “going woke”. And the noise got so loud so quickly that the brands bottled it.
GAP’s 2010 rebrand lasted all of six days (Image credit: Gap)
And what they perhaps forgot is that online noise does, eventually, die down. Some of the most controversial rebrands of the last couple of decades have proven to have remarkable staying power. Back in 2014, the new Airbnb logo faced an avalanche of criticism accusing it of everything from lack of originality to sexual symbolism. Twelve years later, it’s still going strong – and hardly anyone remembers the initial controversy.
Similarly, Instagram‘s switch from its realistic retro camera icon to a minimalist gradient in 2016 was initially wildly unpopular, with the bright gradient called childish and ugly at the time. Turns out Instagram was ahead of the curve – that skeuomorphic camera would look positively dated today, whereas the gradient Instagram logo is now one of the most recognisable in the world.
Who’s still complaining about the Airbnb logo?
What these examples show is that while the internet has always been quick to judge rebrands, perhaps the best judge is time. Once all of the noise has died down, longevity serves as pretty categorial proof that a rebrand was sound.
Indeed, some rebrands from the 2020s are now half a decade old, giving us the benefit of hindsight to decide what truly worked and what didn’t. Burger King’s flat design bonanza is still sizzling five years later. Conversely, in the wake of the recent news that it’s slashing its metaverse department, Facebook’s 2021 ‘Meta’ rebrand finally looks like a failure in 2026.
So while the internet will always be a wild west of lightning fast reactions, perhaps we ought to bear in mind that the true marker of a successful rebrand is time. Are people still complaining once the dust has settled five years later? Or is it, like Airbnb, now just a solid and recognizable brand identity? And perhaps the brands feeling threatened by cries of “Woke!” need to remember the same thing too.
Daniel John is Design Editor at Creative Bloq. He reports on the worlds of design, branding and lifestyle tech, and has covered several industry events including Milan Design Week, OFFF Barcelona and Adobe Max in Los Angeles. He has interviewed leaders and designers at brands including Apple, Microsoft and Adobe. Daniel’s debut book of short stories and poems was published in 2018, and his comedy newsletter is a Substack Bestseller.
Your portfolio looks incredible. Your work wins awards. Yet clients ghost you after initial interest, and competitors with weaker portfolios land bigger projects.
The disconnect isn’t your design skill. It’s your brand architecture.
Some design professionals treat branding as an aesthetic exercise—a logo here, a color palette there, maybe some Instagram templates. Meanwhile, strategic positioning sits neglected in a Google Doc nobody reads. This misalignment costs you clients, credibility, and eventually, confidence in your own expertise.
I’ve watched talented designers struggle for years before realizing their branding mistakes were systematic, not creative. The good news? Systems can be rebuilt. Let me show you the ten structural failures that undermine design brands and the frameworks that replace them.
Why Do So Many Design Brands Feel Identical Despite Different Aesthetics?
Because they confuse decoration with differentiation.
Two studios can have completely different visual styles yet occupy the exact same position in a client’s mind: “another freelance designer.” The brand foundation determines perception. Visuals simply express it.
Think about it. When a potential client visits your website, they’re not evaluating your Pantone choices. They’re asking: Do you understand my problem? Can I trust you to solve it? Why should I choose you instead of the dozens of others I’m considering?
Your brand foundation answers these questions before your portfolio ever loads.
What the Brand Foundation Framework Actually Includes
I call this the Strategic Core Architecture—five elements that must crystallize before you touch a single design file.
Mission Clarity: Not a fluffy statement about “creating beautiful experiences.” A concrete answer to what change you create in the world through design. For example: “We help sustainable fashion startups compete visually with fast fashion giants” is a mission. “We create meaningful brand experiences” is vapor.
Values Articulation: Specific principles that guide decisions and client relationships. Values like “transparency” mean nothing until you define them: “We share our complete process, including failures and pivots, in weekly client updates.”
Audience Precision: Demographics matter less than psychographics. Who exactly feels the pain you solve? A “small business owner” is too broad. “A second-generation family business owner trying to modernize without alienating their legacy customer base” is a person you can design for.
Offer Definition: What exactly are clients hiring you to deliver? “Brand identity” spans everything from a logo to a complete market repositioning. Specificity attracts. Ambiguity repels.
Positioning Statement: The single sentence that differentiates you. This isn’t a tagline. It’s strategic: “Unlike generalist agencies, we only work with healthcare technology companies navigating FDA compliance in their branding.”
Here’s what happens when you skip this foundation: You design a gorgeous visual identity that communicates nothing about who you serve or why you matter. Clients see pretty shapes. They don’t see relevance.
Branding Mistake #1: Building Visuals Before Strategy
Designers love creating. Strategy feels like homework. So they skip straight to mood boards and logo sketches, hoping the strategy will emerge from the aesthetics.
It never does.
The Consequence of Visual-First Branding
Without strategic grounding, your brand becomes a decoration engine. Beautiful, perhaps. But interchangeable. When a client can’t articulate why they chose you beyond “I liked your style,” you’re competing purely on taste—the most subjective, unreliable differentiator possible.
Additionally, visual-first branding leads to constant redesigns. Every trend shift makes you question your entire identity because you have no strategic anchor. Should you adopt that trendy gradient? Switch to that popular font? Without a strategy, you’re rudderless.
The Strategic-First Approach
Start with the Brand Foundation Framework I outlined above. Document every element. Be ruthlessly specific. Then, and only then, begin visual exploration.
Your visuals should express your strategy, not create it. When someone asks why you chose that particular colour palette, you should have a strategic answer rooted in audience psychology and positioning goals.
Furthermore, this approach makes design decisions easier. When you know exactly who you serve and what you stand for, typography choices become obvious. Colour psychology aligns with audience preferences. Every visual element supports the strategic foundation.
Branding Mistake #2: The “Everyone Is My Client” Delusion
Broad appeal sounds smart. Cast a wide net, catch more fish. Except branding doesn’t work like fishing.
Why Generalist Positioning Fails
When you position yourself as “a designer for everyone,” you trigger a psychological phenomenon I call Relevance Dilution. The human brain categorizes and simplifies. “Designer for everyone” translates to “designer for no one specific” in prospect psychology.
Moreover, generalist branding prevents word-of-mouth growth. Satisfied clients can’t refer you effectively because they don’t know who else you serve. “You should hire Alex, they’re a great designer” is weak. “You’re launching a fintech app? You need Alex—they exclusively brand financial technology startups” is powerful.
The Specialization Strategy Matrix
Choose your specialization axis deliberately. You have several options:
Industry Vertical: Serve only restaurants, or only SaaS companies, or only nonprofits. Deep industry knowledge becomes your competitive advantage.
Service Horizontal: Focus exclusively on one service—packaging design, environmental graphics, or digital product branding. Become the undisputed expert in that specific deliverable.
Audience Segment: Serve only women entrepreneurs, or only second-career professionals, or only Gen-Z founders. Understand their unique worldview intimately.
Problem Domain: Specialize in rebrands, launches, or legacy brand modernization. Each requires different expertise and attracts different clients.
Pick one. Dominate it. Then, if growth demands, expand strategically to adjacent specializations.
Branding Mistake #3: Inconsistent Visual Systems Across Touchpoints
Your website uses one colour palette, while your Instagram uses another. Meanwhile, your proposal templates look like they came from a different company entirely.
How Inconsistency Destroys Brand Equity
Every inconsistent touchpoint forces prospects to rebuild their mental model of your brand. This cognitive friction accumulates. Eventually, they just move on to a competitor whose brand feels coherent.
I’ve seen designers lose projects because their email signature used different fonts from their portfolio. It seems trivial. But these micro-inconsistencies signal sloppiness. If you can’t maintain consistency in your own brand, why would a client trust you with theirs?
Building the Brand System Architecture
Create what I call a Touchpoint Coherence System—a documented framework ensuring visual consistency everywhere your brand appears.
Colour Application Rules: Don’t just list hex codes. Define usage rules. Primary colours for headlines and CTAs. Secondary colours for accents. Neutral palette for body text and backgrounds. Specify ratios and combinations.
Typography Hierarchy: Assign specific roles. Heading font, subheading font, body font. Define sizes, weights, and spacing for each level. Document when to break these rules (rarely).
Logo Usage Guidelines: Clear space requirements. Minimum sizes. Approved backgrounds. Incorrect usage examples. Treat your logo like a legal trademark because it essentially is one.
Imagery Style: Define your photographic or illustrative approach. Lighting style, composition preferences, and subject matter themes. Create a visual reference board.
Layout Principles: Grid systems, alignment rules, white space standards. These invisible structures create visual consistency even when content varies.
Document everything in a living brand guide. Update it as your brand evolves. Reference it religiously.
Branding Mistake #4: Overengineered or Oversimplified Logo Design
Logos occupy a strange middle ground. Too complex, and they become unusable. Too simple, and they disappear into generic minimalism.
The Logo Complexity Paradox
I’ve watched designers spend months crafting intricate logos with symbolic meaning in every curve. Beautiful work. Completely impractical. When that logo shrinks to favicon size, it becomes an indistinct blob.
Conversely, the minimalism trend produced thousands of sans-serif wordmarks that achieve simplicity by sacrificing all personality. Your logo shouldn’t require a manifesto to explain it, but it also shouldn’t be indistinguishable from every other “modern” brand.
The Recognition-Scalability Framework
Effective logos balance three variables: distinctiveness, simplicity, and scalability. Optimize for all three simultaneously.
Distinctiveness means your logo doesn’t resemble competitors. Research your market thoroughly. If everyone uses geometric shapes, consider organic forms. If everyone goes minimal, explore expressive typography.
Simplicity means limiting elements ruthlessly. Can you achieve the same effect with two colours instead of five? One shape instead of three? Always simplify without losing character.
Scalability means testing rigorously. Print your logo at a half-inch width. Does it still read clearly? Convert it to solid black. Does the design hold up? Display it at billboard scale. Does it look intentional or accidentally enlarged?
Additionally, consider these practical constraints: Does it work in embroidery? On a pen? As an app icon? In a Zoom background? Real-world applications expose design weaknesses fast.
Branding Mistake #5: Cluttered Layouts That Bury Your Message
More elements seem more impressive. More colours, more fonts, more imagery, more information. Except the opposite is true.
The Cognitive Load Crisis
Every element you add increases cognitive load—the mental effort required to process your design. Humans have limited processing capacity. Overload it, and they disengage entirely.
I call this the Attention Budget Principle: Every viewer arrives with a fixed amount of attention. You can invest it wisely in communicating one strong message, or squander it across a dozen weak ones.
The Hierarchy-First Design Method
Start every layout by identifying your single primary message. Not your three main points. Your one essential takeaway. Everything else is secondary.
Visual Hierarchy means guiding the eye deliberately. Size, contrast, colour, and position all create hierarchy. Your primary message gets the strongest visual emphasis. Supporting elements recede proportionally.
White Space Strategy isn’t emptiness—it’s emphasis through absence. Space around an element makes it more prominent. Dense layouts make everything equally ignorable.
Element Reduction Protocol: Design your layout. Then remove 30% of the elements. Force yourself. You’ll discover most were redundant. The remaining 70% becomes significantly stronger.
Furthermore, establish a clear entry point for the viewer’s eye. Where should they look first? Then the second? Then the third? Intentional visual flow transforms chaos into clarity.
Branding Mistake #6: Typography That Undermines Professionalism
Font choices seem subjective. They’re not. Typography communicates at a subconscious level, triggering immediate associations about professionalism, trustworthiness, and quality.
How Typography Shapes Perception
Research shows people make judgments about your credibility within 50 milliseconds of viewing your content. Typography drives much of that instant assessment.
Default fonts signal carelessness. Overused fonts signal a lack of originality. Trendy fonts signal trendiness (which ages poorly). Incompatible font pairings signal poor attention to detail.
The Type System Framework
Limit your brand to a Type Trio: one font for headlines, one for body text, one optional accent font for special use.
Headline Font: Distinctive enough to create personality. Legible enough for quick scanning. Usually slightly heavier weight. This is your brand’s voice at its loudest.
Body Font: Maximum readability. Neutral enough to disappear into the reading experience. Generous x-height. Clear letterforms. This is where people spend most of their time.
Accent Font: Use sparingly for quotes, callouts, or special emphasis. This adds flavour without overwhelming. Many strong brands skip this entirely.
Additionally, master these technical fundamentals: appropriate line spacing (generally 1.4-1.6x font size), comfortable line length (50-75 characters), consistent hierarchy through size and weight, and adequate contrast ratios for accessibility.
Test your typography at actual usage sizes. A font that looks perfect in your design file might be illegible on mobile devices.
Branding Mistake #7: Cheap Visuals That Broadcast Amateur Status
Generic stock photos. Low-resolution images. Poorly composed photography. Outdated graphics. These visual choices communicate more about your brand than any mission statement.
The Image Quality Perception Effect
Humans are visual creatures. We process images 60,000 times faster than text. This means your imagery creates instant impressions before anyone reads a word.
Moreover, there’s a documented psychological phenomenon called the Aesthetic-Usability Effect: People perceive attractive designs as more usable, trustworthy, and professional, regardless of actual functionality.
The Visual Asset Strategy
You need a consistent approach to imagery across all brand touchpoints. This doesn’t mean every photo looks identical. It means they feel cohesively related.
Photography Style: Define your approach. High contrast or soft lighting? Composed or candid? Studio or environmental? Colour palette preferences? Depth of field standards?
Illustration Approach: If you use illustrations, maintain style consistency. Line weight, colour application, level of detail, and rendering technique should remain constant.
Custom Over Stock: Invest in original photography whenever possible. Stock images, even good ones, appear across thousands of brands. Custom imagery is exclusively yours.
Image Quality Standards: Establish minimum resolution requirements. Implement quality control before any image goes live. A single blurry photo undermines an otherwise polished brand.
Furthermore, consider image authenticity. Audiences increasingly detect and reject overly staged or artificial imagery. Authentic visuals build trust faster than perfection.
Branding Mistake #8: Inconsistent Voice Across Channels
Your website reads like a law firm, yet your Instagram captions sound like a teenager. To make matters worse, your email newsletters adopt a completely different personality. This fragmentation confuses your audience and dilutes your brand identity.
The Multi-Personality Brand Problem
Inconsistent voice triggers what I call Brand Dissonance—the uncomfortable feeling when different touchpoints send conflicting signals about who you are.
Clients start questioning which version represents the “real” you. This uncertainty prevents the trust-building necessary for high-value relationships. Additionally, an inconsistent voice makes your brand unmemorable because people can’t form a coherent mental model.
The Voice Architecture System
Document your brand voice with specific guidelines beyond generic descriptors like “professional” or “friendly.”
Voice Characteristics Matrix: Define where you fall on key spectrums. Formal vs. casual (and how formal/casual). Playful vs. serious. Authoritative vs. collaborative. Technical vs. accessible. Emotional vs. rational.
Vocabulary Guidelines: Maintain lists of preferred and forbidden words. Some brands say “clients,” others say “partners.” Some say “projects,” others say “collaborations.” These choices compound into personality.
Sentence Structure Patterns: Long, flowing sentences create different impressions than short, punchy ones. Document your preferences. Notice how your sentence structure is reading right now—direct and explanatory, establishing authority through clarity rather than complexity.
Perspective and Pronouns: Consistent use of “we,” “I,” or “you.” Each creates different relational dynamics. Choose deliberately based on your positioning.
Create a voice guide with specific examples. Show correct and incorrect usage. Make it actionable enough that anyone representing your brand can apply it consistently.
Branding Mistake #9: Trend-Chasing That Destroys Longevity
Gradients are hot, so you redesign around gradients. Brutalism trends, so you adopt harsh typography and raw layouts. Maximalism returns, so you add decorative elements everywhere.
The Trend Adoption Trap
Trends move in cycles. What’s fresh today looks dated in eighteen months. Constant redesigns to chase trends create multiple problems simultaneously.
First, recognition suffers. Brand recognition requires consistency over time. Frequent visual overhauls reset that recognition-building process to zero.
Second, resources drain. Every redesign costs time and money, better invested in delivering client value or developing real competitive advantages.
Third, positioning weakens. Trend-chasing signals that you follow rather than lead. Clients seeking innovative partners won’t choose the studio that desperately copies whatever’s currently popular.
The Timeless Foundation Method
Build your brand on Era-Resistant Principles—design approaches that transcend temporary aesthetics.
Classic Typography: Choose fonts with decades of proven performance. Helvetica, Garamond, Futura, Gill Sans. These have survived because they work, not because they’re trendy.
Fundamental Colour Theory: Instead of adopting the year’s colour trends, choose colours based on psychological impact and audience resonance. Blue for trust. Red for energy. These associations persist across trend cycles.
Structural Design Principles: Strong hierarchy, clear focus, intentional white space. These fundamentals never go out of style because they’re rooted in human perception, not fashion.
Trend Integration Guidelines: When you want to incorporate current aesthetics, do so as accent layers, not foundational elements. A trendy illustration style on your Instagram is fine. Rebuilding your entire visual identity around it is risky.
Strong brands evolve gradually. They refine rather than reinvent. They adapt without abandoning their core identity.
Branding Mistake #10: Neglecting Your Digital Brand Presence
Your website hasn’t been updated in two years, while your social media profiles still use outdated logos. Meanwhile, your Google Business listing shows closed, and your LinkedIn features work from 2019.
Digital Decay and Brand Credibility
Digital neglect communicates active messages, not passive absence. An outdated website doesn’t say “we’ve been busy.” It says “we don’t care about details” or worse, “we might be out of business.”
I’ve seen designers lose significant projects because prospects googled them and found inactive social accounts or broken portfolio links. The prospect didn’t reach out to ask. They simply moved to the next candidate.
The Digital Maintenance Protocol
Establish a Digital Touchpoint Audit System—a regular review of every digital property representing your brand.
Website Refresh Cadence: At a minimum, update your portfolio quarterly. Add new projects. Remove weaker old ones. Check all links. Verify load speeds. Test mobile responsiveness. Update your bio to reflect current positioning.
Social Media Consistency: If you maintain profiles, maintain them properly. Inconsistent posting is worse than no profile at all because it signals abandonment. Either commit to regular updates or redirect energy elsewhere.
Search Presence Management: Google your brand regularly. What appears? Outdated directory listings? Incorrect information? Dead links? Claim and update every listing you find.
Performance Optimization: Page speed impacts both user experience and search rankings. Compress images. Minimize code. Use modern hosting. A slow website broadcasts technical incompetence regardless of your actual skills.
Mobile-First Design: Over 60% of web traffic is mobile. If your site doesn’t work flawlessly on phones, you’re eliminating most potential clients from considering you.
Additionally, maintain consistency with offline brand materials. Your digital and physical presence should feel like the same brand, not distant cousins.
The Integration Framework: Making It All Work Together
Understanding individual branding mistakes helps. But real transformation requires systematic integration across all elements.
Building Your Brand Operating System
Think of your brand as an operating system, not a collection of isolated assets. Every component connects to and reinforces the others.
Your strategic foundation informs your positioning, which in turn determines your visual identity. Through consistent touchpoints, that visual identity gets expressed to your audience. Meanwhile, your voice reinforces your positioning across every interaction. Finally, your digital presence maintains accessibility to all of these elements.
Implementation Sequence: Start with strategy, move to core visuals, document systems, roll out consistently, then maintain actively. Skipping steps or reversing order creates the mistakes we’ve covered.
Quality Control Mechanisms: Establish approval processes before anything goes public. Every piece of content should pass through a brand alignment check: Does this support our positioning? Does it maintain our voice? Does it meet our visual standards?
Evolution Planning: Your brand should evolve, not revolve. Plan refinements annually, major updates every 3-5 years. Document the reasons for changes so evolution remains strategic, not reactive.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to fix branding mistakes and build a strong foundation?
Strategic foundation work typically requires 2-4 weeks of focused effort. Visual identity development adds another 4-8 weeks. Full implementation across all touchpoints might span 3-6 months. However, you’ll see benefits immediately as each element improves. Don’t wait for perfection before launching improvements.
Can I fix my branding mistakes gradually, or do I need a complete rebrand?
Gradual refinement works if your foundation is sound, but execution is inconsistent. Complete rebranding becomes necessary when your positioning is fundamentally wrong, or your visual identity actively contradicts your strategy. Assess honestly: are you fixing or rebuilding?
What’s the most critical branding mistake to address first?
Always start with a strategic foundation. Without clarity on positioning, audience, and differentiation, every other fix is cosmetic. You can have perfect visual consistency and still fail if you’re consistently expressing the wrong message to the wrong audience.
How do I know if my brand specialization is too narrow?
Test market size and growth potential. A viable specialization has enough prospects to sustain your business and room to grow. If you’re struggling to find clients, you might be too narrow. If prospects don’t see you as specialized, you’re too broad. Aim for “riches in niches” but avoid niches so small they can’t support you.
Should I hire a brand strategist, or can I do this myself?
You can absolutely develop your own brand strategy, especially if you’re a designer with strategic thinking skills. However, an external perspective helps overcome blind spots. Consider this: You wouldn’t self-diagnose a serious medical condition, even if you’re medically knowledgeable. Sometimes paying for expertise saves time and prevents expensive mistakes.
How often should I update my brand guidelines and visual assets?
Review your brand guidelines annually. Make minor refinements as needed. Plan major updates every 3-5 years or when your positioning significantly shifts. Your portfolio should be updated quarterly with new work. Social presence needs weekly attention at a minimum.
What if my current branding mistakes are already hurting my business?
Acknowledge the situation honestly with existing clients if relevant. Most will respect transparency and improvement. For prospects, focus on presenting your improved brand going forward. Don’t apologize for past work—simply demonstrate your elevated current standards. Strong brands evolve. Show evolution, not error.
How do I maintain brand consistency when working with team members or contractors?
Comprehensive brand guidelines are essential for team consistency. Create detailed documentation covering voice, visuals, and decision-making frameworks. Conduct onboarding training. Establish review processes. Make brand alignment a standard part of quality control, not an optional consideration.
By identifying and systematically correcting these ten branding mistakes, design professionals can transform their positioning from forgettable to strategic, building brands that attract ideal clients and stand the test of time. Don’t hesitate to browse WE AND THE COLOR’s Branding and Graphic Design categories to learn more.
There is nothing more valuable than a lasting first impression. Whether you have a blog, business, brand, or online community, capturing your audience’s attention in the first few seconds is more important than ever. Now, most people think about branding as a website’s content, such as graphics, but there’s a whole new world of customization out there in regards to website addresses that can help with branding.
Creative domain names are an alternative to traditional website addresses and an opportunity to make your website stand out in your industry. Who knew that the Internet had gotten so much bigger and now offers so much more choice! As the leader in this industry, Identity Digital helps brands, creative individuals, and entrepreneurs elevate their online presence with the world’s largest and most relevant portfolio of domain extensions.
Here are the top seven domain extensions you didn’t know could help you stand out online:
For Techies & Creative Entrepreneurs
.life
Mission-driven businesses, health and wellness gurus, and founders looking for a unique domain that speaks to the heart of their business should look no further than .life. This domain extension projects energy and conveys the impact on lives, enabling companies to communicate their vision to prospective customers quickly—for example, nurture.life.
For the Personal Finance Coach
.finance
If there is one industry that has boomed as a result of the Internet, it is the world of personal finance. Whether you’re offering tools people can use to make investments or your services as a personal finance coach for larger money goals, this domain extension can make your business stand out with a keyword to help get you in front of more eyes (e.g., northstar.finance).
For the Event Planner
.events
There is an event planner for everyone’s unique vision or tool to help streamline your conference operations. .events can help connect you with the people looking for your services (think ticketing.events). It has the perfect balance of keeping you open to serve many kinds of events while standing out from similarly named businesses.
For the Local Pizza Spot
.pizza
We all have a local pizza spot we wish would get more attention online. The food is delicious, customer service is excellent, and it’s family-owned, but more people need to learn that it exists. Building a website with .pizza, such as marios.pizza, can help a new online business stand out.
For the Travel Company or Vlogger
.travel
This one is perfect for the travel content creator or tour guide company finally ready to make that website. For example, adventures.travel. People already associate your name with travel, so make it that much easier for them to find you online with this extension.
For the House Flipper
.properties
When you see a property, you see potential, and you’ve turned disasters into turn-key homes. Showcase your portfolio of flipped homes or vacation rentals with a URL ending in .properties, such as boltfarm.properties, and establish yourself as a critical player in the real estate market.
For the Freelance Consultant
.consulting
Turn your side hustle into a full-blown freelancing business with .consulting in your URL (e.g., ssl.consulting). Let people know you are open for business and offering your expertise as a consultant by bringing your work to the eyes of more potential clients.
Feature image credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images
There are plenty of car brand logos with hidden meanings, but the reason why Porsche and Ferrari both use a horse as their logo boils down to their individual histories, not branding strategy.
Even though the resemblance is uncanny, both brands derived inspiration from independent moments in European history that just happened to revolve around one animal. Porsche’s horse has direct ties with the land where the brand’s story originates. The company was founded in Stuttgart, a city whose coat of arms has featured a rearing horse for centuries. To pay tribute to its origins, Porsche placed the horse at the center of a crest when it first introduced its logo in the early 1950s.
On the flip side, Ferrari’s horse carries personal and symbolic significance. During World War I, Italian fighter pilot Francesco Baracca painted a prancing horse on his aircraft. After his passing, the horse became a symbol of his legacy. In 1923, when Enzo Ferrari (the founding father of Ferrari) won his first ever race in North Italy, he met Baracca’s father and went on to develop a great friendship with his family. Enzo was eventually moved to adopt that very horse as a logo on his racing cars, believing it would bring good luck.
So, did either brand copy the other? Not really. The two brands share the same animal for entirely different reasons — and these aren’t just the only two brands using the Stuttgart horse. A strange little car company called Steinwinter has basically the same exact logo as Ferrari.
The detail that complicates the story
The explanation above is usually presented as the full story. However, it still doesn’t fully explain why the two horses look more alike than coincidence would allow. The connection becomes complicated once we take the story beyond Francesco Baracca himself.
The part of the story involving Enzo’s encounter with Baracca’s family members is well-documented. What’s not clear is where Baracca got his horse emblem from in the first place. Some speculators indicated that Baracca could have taken this emblem after downing a German pilot whose aircraft carried a horse emblem from their home city, which would be Stuttgart in this case.
If those accounts are to be believed, then the horse that Ferrari adopted is the very same horse that Porsche borrowed from its hometown. While this detail adds further depth to the story, it still doesn’t suggest that either brand has deliberately copied the other. Instead, it shows how the same image could move quietly across borders and contexts, changing meaning as it went.
Why the similarity in logos never became a problem
What ultimately allowed both brands to keep the horse without conflict is how clearly each logo defined its own meaning. In the case of Ferrari, the prancing horse logo became official when it finally commenced the production of its vehicles post World War II. The logo consists of a black horse (also known as Cavallino Rampante) depicted against a yellow background to symbolize the city of Modena, and the Italian flag rests above it all. The horse was positioned facing left, as per the direct instruction of Enzo Ferrari, and this was carried onto Ferrari road cars beginning with the 125 S.
For Porsche, the horse came from the Stuttgart crest of arms. The horse was situated at the centre of a shield that contained the words “Stuttgart” and “Porsche,” along with colours referencing the Württemberg region. The crest has been on the Porsche 356 since the early 1950s, and it was later incorporated onto hubcaps and car bodies. Although the logo has evolved over the years, the horse has stayed part of the larger crest design — and Porsche’s new logo has all of the same elements with slight stylistic changes.
Design Director at Mother Design, Bentzion Goldman, feels identity design has become safe, sanitised and downright boring in the last 12 months. Let’s flip that in 2026, he argues, and make branding weird again.
his is the third year I’ve written about trends and predictions in branding. It usually goes like this: I review the year’s biggest identity design work, layer in my own observations, and provide a light roadmap for the year ahead.
But this year was different. Looking back at the biggest rebrands, what was most remarkable was how utterly unremarkable they were. What stood out was not how bad the brands were but rather their overwhelming okayness. A troubling trend became clear: the rise of safe, forgettable branding.
2025 was the year of Cracker Barrel, the year of HBO MAX / MAX / HBO MAX, and the year of MS NOW (née MSNBC). All branding efforts landed with, at best, a sigh and, at worst, public outrage. What’s more, some of the biggest changes were so subtle you may have barely noticed them: Amazon, Tripadvisor, Verizon, Walmart, Lyft, and OpenAI quietly tweaked their brand systems, even if some of those endeavours were billed as overhauls. Creative Boom even wrote a piece on how the quiet rebrand took over 2025.
Don’t get me wrong, on two accounts. I believe in the power of a masterful brand refresh that subtly tweaks its brand elements, artfully balancing heritage with progress. And there was beautiful, innovative branding released this year. But something deeper emerged when looking at brands with the highest visibility. You might recall the ‘blanding’ era of the 2010s. I think we’ve hit a similar wall at this moment, but for altogether different reasons.
Everything is just okay
Earlier this year, I read James Poniewozik’s piece for The New York Times, The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV, which has stayed with me ever since finishing it. Poniewozik argues that we’ve entered an era in TV where everything is just … okay. He writes that a decade ago, we experienced an era of a lot of bad TV, but the risks and imagination required to make those shows also led to many standout series.
Now, the advent of high-pressure, high-budget streaming platforms and an associated low appetite for risk have resulted in a slew of shows that are beautifully shot, incredibly expensive, and yet—just okay. True creative risk-taking is exceedingly rare to find. Instead, we have a lot of the perfectly acceptable yet often emotionless middle ground.
I believe something similar is happening in the world of branding.
The enemy of a good brand used to be a bad brand: badly kerned typography, poorly chosen colours, and digital illiteracy. Today, the enemy of a good brand is no longer a bad brand, but one that is just okay.
The proliferation and democratisation of design software, along with an increasing awareness of design among the general public, have created an environment where even the smallest teams can produce competent branding. And let me be clear: this is a good thing. Design should be for everyone, and the ability for clients, beginners, and non-designers to create design work elevates the field for everyone. Per a Michael Bierut anecdote, the fact that we now have online trolling of rebrands means people care about branding!
But this new reality has also resulted in a sea of work that’s simply okay. Scroll through this year’s branding projects, and you’ll see a multitude of brands using the same tricks. Many of these identities have no technical fault, and yet they lack a certain emotional depth; the kind of spiritual centre that makes a brand truly resonate with its audience.
Striking a nerve
I think this exact feeling is the reason why the Cracker Barrel rebrand struck such a nerve with the general public. The original identity may have had technical shortcomings, but what the new brand gained in optimisation, it lost in emotional resonance. And now the pushback has created a heightened environment of fear where brands are now even more risk-averse, wary of becoming the next big branding flop torn apart in the comments.
In this new era of mid-branding, we need a new playbook. One that empowers designers to expand their aperture and dare to dream again.
So what’s the way forward? Allow me to advocate for the value of being weird in design.
Weird gets normalised
The simple truth is, people don’t know what they like until they see it. And until they like it, they might hate it. History is full of examples of art so novel in its time that it provoked outrage and even violence. The sans serif style of typography, now completely commonplace, was once considered so radical compared to the serif and ornamental styles of its era that people called it monstrous, ugly, and grotesque—a name that stuck.
In 1913, a ballet by Igor Stravinsky called The Rite of Spring was so innovative for its time, with its use of syncopation, dissonance, and sharp dance movements, that people hurled objects at the stage, cried, and even started fistfights in the audience. The police were called to calm the riot. And you thought the comments on Brand New were bad. Experimentation and transgression are vital for discovering new ideas and finding novel ways forward.
What’s remarkable is that these examples, once shocking innovations, are now normalised. The lesson is profound: people hate change, but, given time, change softens until it becomes the new normal. It is up to us designers to be the tastemakers and the future tellers. This is radical permission: it is a licence to look beyond familiar references and to challenge what we consider ‘good design’.
Image by Bentzion Goldman
This idea is illustrated by industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s MAYA principle: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. This urges designers to push things as far as possible, up to the point where they remain within the tolerance of user comfort. In other words, design something unoriginal, and it will feel predictable, yet design something too radical, and you could incite a riot in a ballet theatre. Our charge, as designers, is to find that sweet spot right on the bleeding edge of innovation.
Here are three brands from the past year that do exactly that.
How to do it
Cotton Design’s identity for Eternal Research is a retro-futuristic system featuring an engraving-inspired wordmark, eleven Victorian-inspired headline typefaces, generative ornamental patterns made with code, and a triangular piece of hardware called the Demon Box. The system defies easy categorisation, balancing minimalism and maximalism in a way that feels immersive and genuinely new.
Mother Design, which I must confess I work for, released branding for Fhirst, a prebiotic soda line that burst onto the market this year. The packaging system draws on the joyful design of early 2000s soda branding, featuring a reverse-contrast script wordmark, an animal mascot for each flavour (the dolphin is my personal favourite), Papyrus as a supporting typeface, and gradients, bubbles, and starbursts galore. It’s a more-is-more system that could easily fall off the rails, but never does, thanks to careful selection and use of brand elements. Instead, the brand radiates pure joy; I have yet to see someone scroll through the project without smiling.
The final project is Clue Perfumery, with design and art directed by Caleb Vanden Boom. Its script logo is beautifully weird, with extreme contrast and bottom-heavy curves that feel both refined and expressive. The brand’s editorial tone is elevated by wildly imaginative art direction: perfume bottles photographed in fish tanks, large-scale butter sculptures, and, most recently, a limited-edition scented stone sculpture shaped like an apple. Clue is one of those brands where the connective tissue isn’t a single idea, but rather good taste and boundless creativity. The eclectic choices work in harmony, resulting in a brand that is lush, unexpected, and engaging.
A Victorian-inspired triangular musical instrument, soda mascots featuring dolphins and eagles, and a perfume bottle covered in butter: these are the kinds of daring choices that push boundaries and yield designs with emotional resonance. These brands are not weird for the sake of it; rather, the unexpected choices are deeply connected to who they are as a brand. The designers involved in their creation reject the safe route, opting instead to question, to research, and to play.
Feeling optimistic
I have every reason to be optimistic for the year ahead in design. We have more tools at our disposal than ever, which means bigger challenges and bigger rewards. I think we will see many brands that make us scroll quickly past without batting an eyelash. But through the sameness, the smartest, most creative, and weirdest brands will find a way to stand out and create inspiring, innovative work.
And for the designers among us, this framework gives us permission to step outside our peripheries and dig deeper for inspiration. In our age of automation and algorithms, designers have the privilege of interrupting the churn of predictable sameness with the uniquely human elements of taste and unexpectedness. Everything is possible, because what is bizarre, weird—even grotesque—today is merely normal tomorrow. So, my biggest hope for the year ahead is precisely this: let’s dream again.
