Creative Thinking

March 21, 2019

Your Logo Is Not Your Brand; but It’s Part of It.

Take a look at one of your favorite brands. A company or entity that’s recognizable, trustworthy, and consistent. They likely have a logo, which could be a simple word mark or coupled with an icon. They have a system of typefaces, a range of colors they use to further convey their personality. And, they have

November 28, 2018

Screens, Self-Esteem, and Creative Confidence

It often goes unnoticed. The steady beat of your workflow going from computer to phone, Facebook to Instagram, back to your work, back to scrolling. Your retinas taking in every glowing pixel it can before it processes each one to form that crippling self-conscious thought: “They’re so much better at _____ than I am.” Melodramatic?

June 27, 2017

Benefits of Skepticism: Big Data

Big data is the future of design. Big data is the future of marketing. Big data is empirical. Big data is going to make up for the fallibility of the human mind. Though there are a lot of potential applications for utilizing this data, it is important to look at it for what it is:

March 15, 2017

Project Highlight: My Birthday Playlist

My Birthday Playlist collects the #1 Billboard hits from your birthday every year since you were born. It populates a timeline of all the songs and allows you to export your playlist to Spotify. We developed this little web application as a holiday project after returning to the studio the first week of January. The

January 23, 2017

An Interview with David Hildreth and Silas Kyler

David Hildreth and Silas Kyler are the creators of Felled, a documentary film about urban lumberjacking. In conjunction with the movie, they created a book called The Art and Craft of Wood. Could you tell us a bit about how Felled came to fruition? David: Felled is the story of saving a dead neighborhood tree that was

January 19, 2017

From Mental Illness to Marketing: the Psychology of Nostalgia

What is Nostalgia? Nostalgia was first defined by Johannes Hoffer, a Swiss doctor who described the condition as “a neurological disease of essentially demonic cause.” He noticed symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even fever in Swiss mercenaries who were longing for their native land. He coined the term using the roots nostos, a Greek

November 18, 2016

Method + Madness Recap

Method + Madness Method + Madness is a conference put on by AIGA Arizona chapter every year during Phoenix Design Week. It is, by far, the design highlight of the year here in Arizona. This year, we had the opportunity to emcee the conference, which went well. We didn’t even pull any of the stunts we

November 16, 2016

An Interview with Brandon Barnard

On paper, Brandon Barnard is a cinematographer and editor based in Phoenix, Arizona. In practice, Barnard is a creative in pursuit of new ways to move audiences through visual storytelling, connecting the dots where dialogue alone cannot. From personal projects like his Audience Choice Award winner, “Paint Life Beautiful,” to National American Advertising Award winning

October 14, 2016

The Advice Question

Since the rise in popularity of long-form interview publications like The Great Discontent and Design Matters Podcast with Debbie Millman, the interview has been widely regarded as a worthy-of-our-time content format. It’s no surprise, really. Compared to articles, listicles, blog posts, etc., the interview is more genuine. It’s personal, not argumentative. We can glean insights from