Why so serious?
Do you remember what you wanted to be when you were a kid? Do you remember the playfulness, the fun, the freedom of making things without knowing what they were supposed to become?
Play in branding is something we keep coming back to — not as a method, but as a reminder. There’s a kind of thinking that only happens when you stop trying to think correctly. Play in branding means starting with a pen and an empty page before the strategy has a chance to close things down.
Lately, I’ve been drawing a lot. No books on vacation this time. Just a pen and an empty notebook. I draw fast, without thinking. Strange creatures appear, not so different from the ones I used to draw as a kid.
Isn’t that what we wanted to do as kids? Make our drawings real? Give life to the things that existed only in our imagination? And they were alive: a stick was a sword, a board was a plane, and all monsters were real.
Somewhere along the way, we learned to be serious. Especially in branding, where every decision needs a reason, every idea a strategy, every detail a purpose.
But what if we sometimes started with a doodle instead? Something unexpected. Something that makes us smile before we even know why.
Because branding isn’t only about finding the right answers; it’s about discovering things nobody knew were there.
Maybe we should give ourselves a little more room to play. Kill the brief before the rationale, before we try to make everything make sense.
Sometimes, all you need is a pen, an empty notebook, and a little bit of childhood left in you.
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Passion
Passion in design gets misquoted constantly — treated as fuel when it's closer to weather. We've spent twenty years watching it ignite projects and abandon them halfway through. What keeps work honest isn't feeling, it's the decision to continue when passion has already left the room. That gap between passion in design and actual commitment is where studios either build something or quietly repeat themselves.
Sometimes we all need a little push
Need a little push before you can finally commit to a branding project? We've heard that hesitation hundreds of times — and it rarely has anything to do with budget. After 20 years and 81 logos, we've learned that the thing holding most businesses back isn't readiness. It's the wrong idea of what readiness looks like. Sometimes all it takes is someone telling you: you're closer than you think.
Should designers code?
Should designers code? We've been asking ourselves that question since 2004 — across identities, interfaces, and campaigns where design met production head-on. The answer depends entirely on what kind of designer you want to be, and what kind of work you want to make. Should designers code is the wrong binary; the real question is how much of the medium should you understand before you hand it off.
The Gap
Vanishing middle designers are the most interesting people in any studio — and the first ones the industry stops talking about. The gap between junior promise and senior authority isn't new, but it's getting harder to cross, and we've been watching it happen up close for twenty years. What follows is what that looks like from where we sit.
What are you buying with a designer?
What you buy with a designer is rarely what appears on the invoice. The file is the last thing — what precedes it is accumulated judgment, pattern recognition sharpened across decades, and the discipline to reject work that almost works. We've built 81 logos and won over 80 awards not by delivering what clients asked for, but by understanding what they actually needed.
Black and white
Black and white design is where we start every project — not as a stylistic preference, but as a structural test. If a mark, layout, or identity doesn't hold in two tones, it won't survive color, scale, or time. Black and white design is the first filter, and for us, it's often the only one that matters.
We always see ourselves a little better before we look in the mirror.
Brand self-perception distorts before the brief even lands on our desk. We've watched it happen across 81 logo projects — a company convinced their identity reads confident, while their audience registers something closer to anxious. The mirror test isn't vanity; it's the first honest step in any serious brand identity work.
To all the misfits who jumped to freelancing
Freelance designer struggles don't announce themselves. One month you're euphoric about escaping the agency; six months later you're chasing an invoice at midnight and questioning every career decision you've ever made. We've seen this arc enough times — from our studio in Ljubljana, across two decades of watching good designers disappear into bad freelance situations — to say something honest about it.