In today’s content-saturated world, creating something interesting or meaningful is only half the battle — Ensuring it reaches the right audience is the elusive other half. If the process of creating a case study for a recent content series has taught me anything, it’s that a single idea can be transformed into a multi-format, weeks-long campaign. Make Your Wordmark strategically repurposes content to make it more likely that marketing executives and creative professionals get a chance to consider its main concepts. See Case Study The foundation of my campaign centers around the long-form LinkedIn article that explores the power of bespoke typography in …

I just spent the past six weeks planning a social media content series on custom typography for logo design. I carefully crafted a 2,000-word article, made umpteen revisions, and double-checked it against best practices in a concerted effort to beat the latest LinkedIn algorithms. I designed six follow-up carousel and video posts, all in support of the article, and arranged distribution on a strategic month-long calendar. The goal? Establish credibility among creative professionals and pique the interest of marketing executives.  Everything was created, uploaded, planned, locked, and loaded. The urge to publish was real. What could possibly prevent me from …

I took my first job as an Art Director in 2005. After several unsuccessful attempts at explaining what that meant to my parents, I ultimately told them it was just a fancy name for a Graphic Designer. They grasped that concept quickly, and I’ve settled on that occupational description ever since. Over the past twenty years, the title on my business card has changed from Creative Director to Owner, but I remain most comfortable referring to myself as a Graphic Designer. The title that I think describes what I do the best, though, is Communications Designer. When you break the …

Has anybody talked to their friends on Facebook recently? Me neither. It’s not that I haven’t tried. Every time I login, unfortunately, I see one person’s organic post for every five paid posts. I lose interest, and I leave to check out the scores on ESPN instead.  I’m not the only one leaving so quickly. Since 2020, Facebook has experienced a 4% drop in its American user base. That may not seem like much, but considering the U.S. is home to almost 214 million users, 4% equates to nearly 10 millions people walking away in less than 5 years. Even more …

I’ve always been a big fan of documenting the creative process. Sure, it’s extra work. It can also seem like a complete waste of time, especially when you’re on the 12th round of client changes and there’s no end in sight. Times like these make one question, if I don’t like the final solution, what am I keeping all this junk for? Still, there’s something therapeutic about tracking the journey.  Over the years, though, I’ve found my love for process has more benefits than just internal reflection — with any creative project, really, but especially with logo design. Making an effort …

“Didn’t you mention to me, once, that the MFA is the new MBA?” my twin brother, Jim, a professor of Industrial Design at Notre Dame, recently asked me. That was a few years ago, I told him, right after I read, A Whole New Mind, by Danielle H. Pink. Jim is a thoughtful and deliberate designer, so his question intrigued me. “What made you think of that?” I replied. “I just had lunch with the program director at another University. He quoted that book the entire time,” he said. How original, I thought. Don’t get me wrong, I quote authors all …

Massimo Vignelli, the iconic 20th Century corporate identity designer, famously quipped that five good fonts was all that’s needed — Futura, Times New Roman, Helvetica, Bodoni, and Century. That’s it. With those fonts, every piece of communications can be laid out. Every billboard designed. Every brand built.  What’s most interesting about Vignelli’s take on type, of course, is not the specific selection of fonts. (Personally, I would replace Helvetica with Franklin Gothic.) Instead, what historians recall the most about him is his pragmatic approach to graphic problem solving. In a field as subjective and creative as graphic design, can you imagine …