The hardest brief isn't the one with no constraints, it's the one where you have to decide what to remove.

Most design processes are additive - another typeface option, another colour, another slide… it feels like progress, it looks like thoroughness, but it is usually neither.

The brands that last are built on decisions about what not to include.

Subtraction isn't minimalism. Minimalism is an aesthetic. Subtraction is a method - the deliberate removal of anything that doesn't earn it's place. It requires more confidence than adding does, because you can't hide behind complexity.

When we take on a new brand, we spend as much time deciding what the identity won't do as what it will. What it won't say, what it won't look like, what category it refuses to belong to.

That is where the work actually starts.