My buddy James asks what I think about this article on branding being dead as it relates to my previous post on the matter of getting a brand. I figured I’d reply here, because it’s a damn good question.

I think Hugh has a lot of good points… as usual. But I think we’re talking about different kinds of things. I don’t think he’d disagree (at least I hope he wouldn’t) that branding is one of the reasons Google is where they are today. Now, when I say branding, I mean the fact that “Google” has become synonomous with “searching for shit on the Intarweb”.

After reading it, I have to assume he’s talking about visual branding more than branding an experience. When I wrote this post, I was talking about experience branding. Making your product notable within the marketplace… and that’s so little about a flashy logo and more about being out there and talked about. And it’s really hard to be out there and talked about when your product is wearing someone elses’ packaging. Even when Google provided search results for other companies, it was usually with pretty obvious “powered by Google” tagging.

So, I think the days of the HUGE branding budget are dead… and good riddance. But branding in terms of making sure people know who’s behind that great experience is more important than its ever been.

I don’t think you’re ever too small to start pursuing a brand. Unfortunately, so few small companies these days actually work at having a brand. Why? I think it’s easier to whore yourself out than remain consistent and stay the course to building a brand.

Think about it. You have a brand new web app… someone comes along and says “I’ll work with you, but you gotta let me brand your product.” Chances are good they have something you want. So, you sell yourself. You tell yourself it’s ok… branding is hard, it’s easier to remain the anonymous player behind the scenes.

The problem with that is you’ve just created/expanded/strengthened someone elses’ brand. And they own you. If no one knows who you are without your “partner” and you can’t make a decision for fear of pissing them off, then who owns the company? Hint: It’s not you.

So, stick to your guns and build your brand. It’s the only way to stay independent (and that’s why we got into business to start with, isn’t it?).

A while back, I was pondering the reason that everyone and their cousin thinks they’re a designer. I think it comes down to exposure.

When we’re talking design, you’re exposed to it from birth (pretty much). I mean, we’re bombarded with things that were at one point designed. From forms, to ads, to the bottle the formula comes in. It’s all design.

No so much with something like accounting or programming languages. Most of us didn’t have a checkbook when we were kids… which pretty much guarantees that we’ll treat people who’re good at less accessible things like accounting with reverance for their “black art.”

So, everyone’s a designer. I had this problem at my last job. The problem is, the buck didn’t stop anywhere either. I was told at least twice that we “weren’t big enough” to have a person appointed creative director. Um… are you ever too small to have someone in charge of the direction of the company’s “touch points?” I don’t think so.

You can be too small to have a person who’s JUST a creative director. But that doesn’t mean you can’t appoint someone (anyone) to oversee the creative direction of the company. In fact if you don’t, you’re heading for a shitstorm of the first order.

Not having someone in charge of the creative direction is like not having a CEO… sure, it might work for a while, but anarchy is no way to run a business… and unfortunately true democracy isn’t either. Hell, true democracy isn’t even how you run a country.

So, if you’re sitting around thinking you can design by committee, let me be the first to tell you you’re on the road to looking like crap.

Nifty JavaScript to create Apple-style reflections for images.

You’re prolly gonna get burned eventually.

I put a large number of additional pics of our trip to Italy up on Flickr in no particular order.

Enjoy.

Talking to a friend of mine, I’m reminded of one of the things that makes me the saddest about a lot of companies. They’re losing the struggle.

I think we all have the struggle inside of us. Its the fight against the voice in our head that says what we have now is “good enough.” If you listen to that voice you eventually die.

I dunno about you, but I try my hardest to tell the voice where to go stick it. There so much room for improvement in everything we do, it’s just really sad and pathetic if we let ourselves settle for “barely there.”

So, if you’re just treading water (as a company or an individual) I strongly encourage you to shake things up. Put that fancy stuff into your web site, even if it means a slight delay. Take the time to do that project you started right.

Because, seriously… lose the struggle and it’s only a matter of time.

I’ll preface this with an admission… I can be a pretty negative person. I also sometimes let my wit and sarcasm get the best of me and I’ll run down someone who doesn’t necessarily deserve it… or even someone who does deserve it. I’ve tried to keep this out of my blog… and I’ve deleted a couple of posts because I felt like they went past constructive criticism into: A) character assassination; or B) just being a dick.

Now that that’s out of the way, I want to address a pet peeve of mine. The overly negative blogger. This is the blogger that’s always making fun of something or someone. They don’t seem to have anything nice to say except for their small circle of friends or “approved” ideas. They’re kinda like the guy we all knew in high school who only knew how to relate to the group through cutting other people down. It was fucking retarded in high school and it’s even more so now.

I’m all for calling people out on stupidity… I do it a lot, both in person and on here. But what I think sucks ass is when someone who’s probably a lot busier than you takes the time to come comment on your blog and all you can do to return the favor is go from insulting their company to insulting them personally.

That ain’t “the conversation” pal. It’s just being a dick.

So, here’s my challege to you if this hits close to home… stop being a jerk and start adding intelligence to the world. Come up with something new to say.

Then when you run into a situation where it is time to run someone down with a virtual steamroller, it has a lot more impact.

I think the best way to put this is sometimes you have people who just hurt morale for the business as a whole.

These people can be classified into two camps, in my opinion… the Ne’er-Do-Wells and the Boat Anchors.
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It’s here. Kudos to FedEx for getting my MacBook from Shanghai to Denver in two days transit time… and those two days were a Saturday and a Sunday. I take back all the nasty things I said about FedEx… they’ve even fixed their web site.

First impressions are:

1. It’s huge.
2. It’s very very fast with native applications.
3. The screen is big, gorgeous and bright.
4. It’s huge.
5. The MagSafe is pretty slick.
6. It’s huge and fast.

Now I’m off to the dump to get rid of this crap.