Mountain Hardwear
Founded by a small group of industry iconoclasts in California in 1993, Mountain Hardwear gained credibility and praise from outdoor enthusiasts. But the brand had fallen into familiar category tropes and it wasn’t standing out or amplifying its core strengths and points of difference.
This was an opportunity to reinvigorate the brand with its innate rebellious spirit—which unlocked MHW’s unique point of view on the outdoors.
“We’re old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway”
Mode
Mode sought to expand its audience reach beyond data analysts and into a wider enterprise market.
The new brand positioning needed to capture its optimism for a new kind of business intelligence: data that’s easy, fast and actionable.
The tone and behavior of the new identity system embodies how the Mode works and what it enables customers to do: changing perspectives, adapting to new information, in short, shift modes.
Let’s shift our thinking.
Rhode Island School of Design
RISDRISD was a 145 year-old institution that had entered a period of transformation in 2020. This meant deep structural commitments to evolve and open up—to new voices, new disciplines and new faculty.
The brand challenge was to create unity across the school without imposing uniformity. This required an intentional process, designed to ensure deep, continuous engagement with the entire RISD community, including students, faculty, administration and partners.
Question to Create,
Create to Question
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art was transforming to be more collaborative, more engaging, more expansive, and more future-focused.
As a Philly institution, it wanted to embrace the city’s independent spirit, and put Philadelphia front and center.
The new brand honors the museum’s past and forges new paths.
Made you look 👀
Finding what’s True
Strategy feels authentic when it’s rooted in what’s true—to internal teams and the audience, in the category and in culture. I like to start by listening for the whys and hows before filtering and prioritizing the most relevant and exciting ideas into brand positioning and concepts.
Words that Stick
Words and frameworks offer powerful shorthands when articulated in a way that’s clear and memorable. Strategy is impactful when it serves as a decision-making filter for entire organizations and when it’s something teams can deliver on day-to-day.
A Voice with Purpose
The relationships between brand and audience, and between the audience and the product, shape the story we tell and the perspective we take. I start by defining the role the brand wants to play in its audience’s lives. From there, tone and language naturally follow.
Brand as a System
Strategy doesn’t work in isolation. It’s one of several elements that tell a cohesive brand story together. I approach strategy as the foundation of a living system, constantly looking for opportunities to partner with creative teams and connect audience experience with signature brand behaviors.