Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes. — I don’t write book reviews. Not since high school. But this is an exception. The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes (2001) by co-authors, Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson, has changed how I see brands. The lens of cultural archetypes opens possibilities and…

Myths, like symbols, have the magical ability to transcend culture and era — In ancient Crete, just south of Greece, King Minos ruled with his wife, Pasiphaë. Poseidon, god of the Sea, sent King Minos a sacrificial bull as a gift. When Minos disregarded the gift, Poseidon cursed the bull and Pasiphaë. …

Design as Semiotics — Introduction French artist René Magritte painted The Treason of Images (sometimes, The Treachery of Images) in 1928–29. You’re familiar: It’s a painting of a pipe with the subtitle, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). Occasionally the painting even goes by this name. It’s been mimicked, mocked, and…

Anthropomorphism in Typography — Introduction A head of lettuce. The shoulder of a road. Arms and legs of a chair. It is natural for humans to assign metaphors based on what is most familiar and comfortable to our knowledge. Language is no different. “We read best what we read most.” —Zuzana Licko Alphabets are the…

An Interrogative Essay on Brand Identity Design — Preface Salt is an interrogative and exploratory essay on personal experiences and brand identity design processes. Salt was originally written and published in 2013 while working at Focus Lab. This article is an abridged version of the printed copy. While my personal process has evolved dramatically, the text remains as it…

Where do free fonts fit into professional identity design? — Recently, I went to Twitter with a thought. Free typography has its place but I’m not sure professional identity design is where it lives. Zach McNair gave a valuable response and argued that tools are not the key to design—any tool can create excellent work: a broom can be a…

Designing Collaboration — Introduction In 2015, Twin Forrest worked with the Savannah College of Art and Design to create Trace, a collaborative platform that lets students share their experiences, best practices, design processes, and project outcomes from past collaborations—everything from the smallest challenges to the biggest obstacles. Some history… The Savannah College of Art and Design…

Improving Color Description — This article is a list for the sake of improving: synonyms for basic color words to enhance color description. I’ve used some of these to “brand” a color for a client and some just improve the variety of words dealing with color and description. These are listed simply to spice…

Twin Forrest turns two — Blow out the candles and pop the bubbly: Twin Forrest is two years old! With another year in the books, I’d like to review, summarize, and celebrate the last two years in retrospective. (Today isn’t technically Twin Forrest’s birthday, but more of a birth quarter. The fourth quarter of 2014…