Kindling 36: Shrinking Moats
Hi friends,
You’ll notice a new format this week. Studio Missives are now Kindling: the ideas that spark a wildfire. Each issue now includes something I’m thinking about related to my strategy-led design work, a few links worth sharing, and a question that might challenge the existing thinking around your brand.
The name is changing, but the numbers continue from where I left off with Studio Missives. Let’s jump into Kindling 36.
A thought from me
A popular brand exercise is to ask leaders to sketch out what they want their business to look like in five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years.
A better exercise might be to ask what the possible threats will appear in that timeframe.
As humans, we’re bad at predicting the future. Nobody outside of a few upstarts in the late 70s saw the rise of the personal computer. Nobody in 2019 thought that chatbots would become a part of our daily lives. Change will come, and it will shrink the moat around your business.
Write down some of the threats of the next twenty years: new technologies, global pandemics, geopolitical shifts, and labour trends. How will your brand defend against these shrinking moats?
Things worth sharing
- GT’s website for their new typeface, GT Meckanik, is fantastic.
- The Brazilian Amazon was given a bold new rebrand.
- Mat Marquis writes at Piccalilli about the end of responsive images. This is a fantastic CSS update that’s going to make the web better for everybody.
- Craig Mod thoughtfully writes about what an iPad could be if it were truly a product that sat between the Mac and the iPhone.
A question to ponder
When was the last time you asked an employee to describe your brand back to you in their own words, and were you comfortable with what you heard?
Until next week,
Nathan
PS. If only there were an AI standard.