Most brand projects start in the wrong place. This is a framework for starting in the right one — and building something that could not belong to anyone else.

There is a version of brand building that begins with a mood board. You save images, pull references, brief a designer, and start making things. It feels productive. It look…

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This last week I attended POV Conference. I’m always a bit skeptical of these design conferences — they can become one big public stunt vs. actual value.

But this one last year stood out. The group is generally more engaged designers or strategists in the industry than those just coming up. It extended past design into technology with OpenAI presenting in the mix with the agencies. The conversation shifted from output to intention, from “look what we did” to “here’s what we’re trying to understand.”

As I’ve shifted out of a large in-house team into curating my own motely crew of on-demand talent, it’s been good to reconnect with designers, peers, and ones I admire.

Are.na — the pursuit of meaning (or at least understanding your own thoughts)
Are.na has a famously minimal UI and, to me, it works like a file cabinet for my imagination—unlike Pinterest, which is too often criticized as commercial and algorithmic. The UI isn’t decoration; it’s philosophy made structural. Calm affordances. Friction where thinking needs time. A visual grammar that invites you to collect, connect, and return—less feed, more filing cabinet; less performance, more private thread you’re weaving. Charles Broskoski got personal and philosophical and asked a real question: what defines us—is it the objects we like, or the journey toward them? That thread we call taste, nurtured by moments, collecting, lived experience. Are.na keeps reminding me that design can protect attention, hold nuance, and make spaciousness a feature rather than an absence. It’s a trunk for ideas, a place to keep fragments until a pattern appears.

MODEM — intention with a punk clock
MODEM were the real punk stars of the show. They opened by explaining their collective expires in 2030—intentional impermanence. Punk, almost. Baller, even. Beneath the attitude is a bigger idea: we are all temporal. That creates urgency in the making and honesty in the brief. You design for impact, not immortality—and sometimes get closer to meaning. The work becomes a moment: fully alive while it’s here, generous in the way it leaves.

Their intention shows up in collaborations and execution: the AI-powered Smart Aid Kit with Map Project Office; TERRA, a mindful wandering device; and Dream Recorder—proof you can make meaning and still keep whimsy in the design.

It didn’t read as cleverness; it read as care—deep listening, exacting execution, and a reach for connection: how people find happiness, how we play well with others, how systems stay humane under pressure.

OpenAI — warm systems, fast loops
OpenAI unveiled a new design system that felt less like a coat of paint and more like a recalibration toward human. Flexible where it needs to be, warm where it could have been cold. I liked their cadence: ideate → research → deploy → iterate. Move fast, learn in public, worry less about perfection. As certain craft tasks compress (what took a 3D artist hours can sometimes take seconds), the role of the designer tilts toward translation and curation—making dense research intelligible, shaping choices that people can actually use.

Base Design — world-building beyond the logo
From the 12 Matcha case to broader process, the reminder was simple: brand is one part of the story; how you communicate and market it is the rest. The agency’s job is often to be the red thread—tying product, voice, system, even manufacturing and archtecture of the actual stores and rolling into one coherent world. Start with people. The people are the brand. Intuition is lived data.

Two Times Elliott
Two Times Elliott walked us through the Hello Klean case — a reminder that play is a method, not a luxury. They were generous about showing in-progress moments and behind-the-scenes thinking, which made the final feel earned rather than mysterious. The dance was between minimal and maximal, instinct and insight: edit until the idea breathes, then add just enough energy to make it live in the hand, the home, the feed.

What I appreciated most was the honesty about courage. Design asks you to choose — and choosing means letting something go. They made a case for conviction: reduce without draining, embellish without noise, and keep the story legible at every scale. When restraint and character coexist, the work feels both precise and warm. That’s harder than it looks.

Bakken & Bæck
Bakken & Bæck shared how they build from zero to launch: teams as orchestras, not silos. Strategists, product, design, copy, front-end — assembled as a living system tuned to the problem. They bridge the human–computer gap by keeping the human in the loop, then letting technology do what it does best: accelerate, simulate, scale. The result is momentum without panic, clarity without fragility.

As a small studio, I loved their model of “webbed” teams — flexible constellations that form, ship, and dissolve, then reform around the next question. It’s choreography more than hierarchy. Curate the players, set the tempo, give everyone a clear score, and let them play. Done well, it looks effortless. Underneath, it’s craft, care, and excellent listening.

Mouthwash Studio
Alex took us through how formed. What stayed with me was their commitment to taste — the belief that how you do anything is how you do everything. Treat every brief like it’s your own company. Hold the bar even when no one’s watching. That posture explained the through-line in their work: a holistic point of view on culture and craft that keeps the studio coherent even as the outputs vary. When the center is taste, the edges can move.

There’s a discipline to that stance. Taste is key to their strategic business stance and in every one of their decisions. What you accept, what you decline, what you push for in the room. That kind of integrity compounds: it attracts the right collaborators, invites the right problems, and produces execution that feels inevitable rather than overworked. The lesson is simple but hard — standards are strategy.

Lightning notes

• Two Times Elliott — play as method; openness to show in-progress. A dance between minimal ↔ maximal, instinct ↔ insight—work that feels special in real hands.

• Mouthwash Studio — commitment to taste. “How you do anything is how you do everything.” Treat every project like it’s your own company. That standard attracts the right talent and the right briefs.

• Bakken & Bæck — product-minded design with a quietly radical calm.

• Wolff Olins — systems thinking without losing soul.

• Revolut — product pace meets brand clarity.

• INSTID — identity as infrastructure.

• Metahaven — concept first, politics in the pixel.

• Displaay Type Foundry — type as a strategic tool, not just styling.

• Studio Dumbar/DEPT® — motion as identity.

• DADA Projects — precision with personality.

• EY Doberman — service design that actually serves.

Two Times Elliott

Dada Projects