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Need a new brand identity for your business? I offer logo design, brand naming, brand strategy, creative direction, graphic design, web design and more.
modular.studio
No matter what business you’re in, there is an aspect of it that is beautiful. Zoom in, zoom out, slow down, speed up. In changing the way you showcase what you do, you’ll change the way it’s perceived. You’ll change the way your brand is perceived.
We are going to increasingly see this from the world’s best brands: Proof of Reality. As businesses jump on the bandwagon of AI to lower the barrier to their vision, the brands that have the resources to do things the old way, the real way, the hard way — will not only do it that way, but make a point of proving it. A new moat is being dug.
Go behind the scenes of Made by Sound.
A story of music, collaboration and craft with @fredagainagain1 and NEST Acoustics. Discover how sound brought the Apple Music logo to life, captured entirely in camera. Just music, made visible.
Only in Bizzarro Data World do obviously good decisions become untenable. Do what’s best for your customers and they will make you rich.
I was leading Heinz Ketchup when Dip N Squeeze came out.
It was a massive upgrade from ketchup packets. Consumers LOVED it.
Problem was we couldn’t get any of the big fast-food players on board.
Dip N Squeeze was 3-5x (I forget the exact numbers) more expensive than packets, and they were free for customers.
The key question was “does having Dip N Squeeze drive more volume?”, thus justifying the incremental cost.
It was nearly impossible to prove. Every penny matters to these operators, so every sales meeting was the same. “We love it, but no.”
Chick Fil A was the only yes.
They didn’t need “proof”. They operated under the assumption simply giving their customers a better experience would pay off in the long run. Incremental cost be damned.
Their conviction was impressive.
They viewed every decision thru the lens of their customer. A much different approach from the other big players.
I assume they treated countless other decisions the same way.
This was ~15 years ago. CFA has been on quite the run since.
(separate but related, I believe being a private co is a massive competitive advantage for CFA)
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Dan Reese claims he "was leading Heinz Ketchup when Dip N Squeeze came out" ~2011, but has described himself as an MBA intern at Heinz then. Reports show Chick-fil-A and Dairy Queen used the packets early on, with others testing.
x.com/DanReese21/sta…
cbsnews.com/news/reinvente…
linkedin.com/in/dan-reese-3…
codypeakadv.com/about-us/dan-r…
These people will have you believe that if you’re doing something boring, something profitable, something that keeps the lights on, something that makes people safer, the thankless, unglamorous tasks that make the world go round, you are not allowed to be cool.
I disagree, aesthetics always matter, they signal truth, competence, effort and care. Good aesthetics are not the property of people who vote a certain way. In everything you do, you should never neglect the aesthetics. Business can be beautiful.
One of our first projects for Modular, Stanford Barbers was done way back in 2019. At the time, wood and whiskey was all the rage in the barbershop industry. We were at the tail end of the hipster revolution.
But Stanford Barbers was unique. A female-owned barber shop, a British expat living in Australia, a young and multi-cultural team — and a chance to express that energy in an authentic and non-performative way.
We swung for the fences, creating a customisable brand identity that could change as often as your hairstyle. The team could doodle and customise their own business cards, stickers could be applied across stationery, social posts, and menus. Even the sign out the front could be vandalised by artists-in-residence.
Now with multiple locations, Stanford Barbers still uses the brand today, and the work still makes me proud. I think it was perfect statement of intent for Modular.
A selection of designs from the recent rebrand for Titan Medtech. The Titan team and I were inspired by 80s and 90s consumer technology brands, but carefully used colour and scale to keep it from feeling kitschy and retro.
When people ask, often incredulously, “What is ‘Taste?’”examples like this explain it well. We live in a world where almost anything is achievable, now more so than ever, I’m told. And yet everyone is forever coming to the same conclusion, a headshot needs to look a certain way, a headshot needs to be inspired by other professional headshots, the edgy headshot rebels in the same way as every other edgy headshot, etc.
The thought process here from Mark Sommerfeld and Terrain shows Taste in action: throw out the rule book, take something unexpected (ID photography), find the highest possible execution of that idea, and make your own version of it.
Taste is about taking the non-obvious path. It’s choosing the right answer among infinite right answers. It’s finding the needle in the needle stack. You cannot hack your way to taste, you certainly can’t ask a computer to have it for you. You must build it for yourself.
One thing I’ve changed my mind on is design retainers. I used to think they were primarily for the agency owner’s benefit, who knew salaries were paid for the month and could sleep better at night. Resource extraction from a client they (hopefully) did good work for during an initial project. Most startup clients simply didn’t have the need for monthly design work.
But in this age of AI, more freedom actually creates a need for more discipline. When anyone on your team can prompt a webpage, a presentation, a social media post, you now have many more points of failure in your brand. Even one properly trained brand custodian on your team can quickly drift away from the guidelines as they encounter a design problem they weren’t explicitly trained for. But now, everyone on your team might be churning out off-brand material with AI tools, blissfully unaware of carefully templated Figma / Canva files and the large initial investment in a brand that needs to stay consistent.
I’m seriously considering creating a brand retainer offering.
quick guide on how to decide which platform you should use for your marketing website:
do you have a full-time webflow dev on staff and want that to be their entire role?
- use webflow
do you have a full-time framer dev on staff and want that to be their entire role?
- use framer
do you want anyone to be able to make any update to your site?
- use a custom built site where you own all of the code
Induction cooktops feel like one of the few modern technologies that is all upside and no downside. Beats electric and gas in performance, safety and arguably even aesthetics.
Alex retweeted
For millions of years, up until 150 years ago, we only saw two lights. Sun and fire.
We have strayed far from those colors. It would be surprising if there were no consequences.
