I’ve been wanting to start this blog for a while. Part of this is because I’ve for a while now felt the need to get under the hood of WordPress to be able to understand it in a way that allows me to credibly discuss it as a tool for my clients. It’s hard to encourage a behavior I myself haven’t adopted.
More importantly though, because I now feel that after 15 years in the design and branding business I have some stories to tell and some knowledge to share that I think others can benefit from, or perhaps start conversations that let me see my experiences through others eyes and other’s perspectives.
I’ve also found, as I began writing notes to myself in my notebook a few years ago, that by working things out in written language, it does something to the topic in my mind that allows a sense of personal discovery that merely thinking about things doesn’t allow, at least for me. This makes the blog a great discovery tool for me, and in the process will allow me to see myself more clearly, and gaining clear authentic insight is at the core of what I hope to do for clients in my professional engagements, so who better to experiment on than myself?
It took me a while to narrow the focus of the conversation I’d like to have here, as I realized after sharing some initial posts with friends and professional peers that the best thing I can do is share a piece of me in my writing, and do my best to give a sense of what inspires me as well as some professional lessons I’ve learned over time, as well as sharing discoveries as I move through projects on an ongoing basis.
The name “Just” comes from where I’ve landed in my understanding of the work I want to. The work that makes me feel fulfilled, intellectually, artistically, and socially, is the work that gets to the deeper truths, the authentic and honest inner core of what makes a business or person for that matter totally unique and wildy special. This is what good branding and design do.
The way I see it, good branding will help identify this uniqueness on a strategic level, and good design will then help express that. And most importantly, great brand strategy is for naught without great design, and visa-versa. Great strategy matched with poor design is the equivalent of a great recipe that wasn’t cooked right. And great design without good strategy is like a cake that looks beautiful, but tastes awful. So here I’m going to try and serve up some insight into how I think the world of branding and design are working together to reveal these special inner truths and make the world a more honest enjoyable place for businesses and individuals to profit from sharing their expertise and helpful products and services.
In addition I’m going to focus on some of the people and work out there that inspires me, and hopefully you’ll find their pursuits equally moving. I’m also going to do my best to follow my own rules for discussion, which is to stay away from over-insular marketing speak and acronyms. Anyone should be able to benefit from these discussions, and I’ve always felt that by trying too hard to make what we say sound overly intellectual or industry specific we often lose focus on what we’re saying and spend more time on how we’re saying it.
This is a symptom of a problem in the marketing, advertising, branding and design space. We often lose touch with the what and everything becomes the how, and Just was created to get beyond that. I hope you benefit from and enjoy what’s published here.