Why Your Brand Colors Look Wrong in Print (and How to Specify Them So They Don’t)
A hex code is not a brand color. Here is what a color specification needs to cover so your blue survives the press, the sign shop, and the embroidery machine.
Visual Identity
Logos, color, and typography, and the systems that hold them together. How identity work gets built, judged, and handed off.
All (74)Brand Strategy (13)New Mexico Notes (2)Visual Identity (11)WordPress Development (28)Working with a Designer (20)
Read MoreWhy Your Brand Colors Look Wrong in Print (and How to Specify Them So They Don’t)
How to Approve a Logo: What to Look At and What to Ignore
Small-business owners often burn revision rounds on the wrong details of a new logo — color hex codes, kerning nits, gut reactions. A short field guide to what actually matters at the approval stage, and what to let go.
How to Pick a Font Pairing for Your Brand (When You’re Not a Designer)
How to pick a brand font pairing without a design degree — the three patterns that work, the four mistakes that fall apart, and a simple test.
What All Those Logo Files Are For (and Which Ones You’ll Actually Use)
A short, practical tour of every logo file format in a brand handoff — SVG, EPS, PDF, PNG, JPG, plus RGB, CMYK, and Pantone — and which ones you'll actually reach for in a normal week.
Three Sites, One Family: What a Side Project Taught Me About Sister Brands
How a workplace ritual at N3B Los Alamos turned into three public-facing sites — and what building a sister-brand system at miniature scale teaches about the same problem at enterprise scale.
Color Psychology Is Oversold: What Actually Matters When Choosing Brand Colors
Color psychology oversells universal meanings. The research says what actually matters is whether a color fits the brand's category and concept — here's what to focus on instead.
Three Typography Mistakes That Make Your Brand Look Cheap
Most typography problems in small-business branding are three specific, common mistakes. Here is what they are, why they happen, and how to fix each one in an afternoon.
What a Brand Style Guide Should Actually Contain (and What’s Filler)
Most brand style guides are too long to be useful. Here are the five sections that earn their keep, the four that are usually filler, and a one-page version you can build today.
Just my type…
I’m sure it’s no surprise that I love typography. I jump at any chance I get to create designs that boldly feature type. I especially love it when I can do this for logos and visual identities. I recently completed…