Three Secrets of Design Feedback

Use these tips to find openness, objectivity, and greater trust in talent. Anyone who has ever done design work for pay will tell you that there are two universal truths, always in play: 1) Everyone agrees that design by committee is bad. 2) Everyone wants to be on the committee. Managing this head/heart conflict is often the […]

Quicken the Pace of Planning at Schools and Colleges

A Unified Planning Framework for Culture, Strategy, and Brand At many non-profit institutions, particularly educational institutions, strategic plans show a preference for addition over consolidation—for expansion over alignment. This programmatic and operational accretion drives steady increases in budgets and staffing, and concomitant growth in goals for endowments and annual philanthropic support. Higher Cost, Slower Pace = […]

All Hail the Memorandum

Purpose-built document formats in office communication can aid organizational alignment. In olden times, the Memorandum was the mainstay of organizational communication. It was a way to document something that needed to be shared and remembered; its format held just enough formality to garner attention, but not so much that it felt arduous or overwhelming to […]

The Importance of Brand/Visual Identity Standards

Brand standards build value at lower cost, nurture loyalty, deliver strategically—and prevent fraud. I’m sometimes asked why identity standards and consistent “branding” (in a very old fashioned, literal, logo sorta way) is important. While the answer to that query may be obvious to marketing types, it’s not so obvious to others, so I put together […]