Brand identity isn’t a formula
Brand doesn’t follow a clean formula of inputs and outputs. Chris Erickson on why that makes branding feel fuzzy, frustrating, and a little like black magic.
Summary
Chris Erickson names a common frustration with branding: it doesn’t follow a clean formula. For people used to predictable inputs and outputs, brand can feel fuzzy and emotional. It can even feel disingenuous, as if creatives pull identities out of a box by some kind of magic.
Highlights
- Brand feels fuzzy and emotional to many people.
- It doesn’t follow a clean input-and-output formula.
- That gap can make the work feel like black magic.
Key insights
The frustration is fair
Skepticism about branding usually comes from not seeing how the work gets made, not from bad intent.
Mystery breeds distrust
When the process is hidden, the result can feel arbitrary, or even disingenuous.
Detailed analysis
This is the starting point for anyone who finds branding hard to trust. Engineers and operators expect cause and effect, and a reveal that seems to come from nowhere doesn’t meet that bar. Naming the frustration openly is the first step toward showing the logic underneath the work.
Conclusion
If branding feels like black magic, the process hasn’t been made visible yet.
A lot of folks, brand feels fuzzy. It feels emotional. For them, it doesn’t follow a clean formula. You know, input this, and you get this as an output. And that can be frustrating.
Moreover, it can feel disingenuous. You know, like black magic. Like, there’s the creatives over there. They like reach their hand into some sort of box and like pull identities out, and like, how did that…