Build That Wall

The Newhouse Wildlife Rescue in Massachusetts had a video go viral last week.

The video features Nibi, a resident rescued beaver who recently got a new beaver roommate, Ziibi. It seems that Nibi and Ziibi didn’t immediately hit it off.

In fact, Nibi hated Ziibi’s guts.

So the Newhouse staff decided to separate them for a while to cool things off and took Ziibi out of the room they had been sharing and put her outside in an attached enclosure.

As soon as Ziibi was outside, Nibi couldn’t stand still.

Let me set the scene: The internal enclosure is room with a tiled floor with cages, food bowls and toys to keep the beavers occupied. They also keep a bunch of sticks laying around, because...beavers like sticks.

Nibi immediately started gathering every stick she could find and started to build a dam in the doorway to keep Ziibi out.

One by one she’d pick up a stick and flip flap her little beaver feet across the tile floor and start stacking them upon the doorway.

She had to build it. Now.

It wasn’t perfect.

It wasn’t pretty.

Maybe it wouldn’t even work.

But she had to start because this was her chance to carve out her territory.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

When we have a troublesome new competitor or business challenge, we often hesitate, doubting whether we have exactly the right answer.

We weigh whether we are in exactly the right place in time to work on it.

We might spend hours pondering the decisions we have to make or the resources that we might need.

We’ll take an inordinate amount of time designing what will be the perfect solution.

But to carve out your territory, you just have to start.

You do what you can.

With what you have.

Where you are.

It’s not going to be perfect.

Or pretty.

Hell, it might not even work.

But starting is better than standing still.

How Short-form Content Is Taking Over the World

Let me ask you a question:

Why are you reading this?

Probably because you’re interested in content marketing, but also my guess is…because it’s short.

Well, short-er as far as blog articles are concerned. 

I mean it’s certainly not a 5000 word keyword-packed bloatware piece that’s going to require your entire lunch hour to consume.

You wanted some fast, actionable, bite-sized pieces of information to make your business better, to get your marketing mojo pumped up again, something you could use to help your clients.

Let’s call it ‘snackable content’.

What else is snackable? Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, 5-minute podcast episodes.

It seems like short-form content is taking over the world these days.

The 800lb. Gorilla

So, why is this happening?

The bigger sociological trend influencing short-form content is that we are all strapped for time. Folks want their content delivered like they were running out to the 7-11 for milk. A quick in and out.

But the bigger influence is that there happens to be a new 800lb. gorilla in the room that everyone is freaking out about.

TikTok

TikTok recently became the most heavily trafficked website in the world. They now get more traffic than the Google’s search engine. A stat that is blowing a whole lot of people’s minds.

And everyone wants a piece of TikTok’s viewership pie.

YouTube is trying to compete with YouTube Shorts. Instagram has Reels. There’s also Snapchat Spotlight, Triller, Byte, Hippo Video, and others jockeying for position.

Instagram has started leaning so heavily into promoting ‘Reels’ that they’ve begun taking ‘regular old’ images users are posting and are turning them into reels – without the person who posted it even knowing it’s happening.

Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, recently posted a reel acknowledging that many O.G. Instagrammers are pretty upset about what is happening to the platform. So much so that he decided he needed to respond to their concerns in a post, explaining how “Instagram is still committed to its account holders who mainly focus on posting images.”

Personally, my ears perked up when he used the word “still”. 

In my experience, tech leaders have a tendency to say they are ‘“still” committed to something just before it goes away.

Time will tell.

On the audio front, many podcasts are experimenting with short-form podcasts that are 5-8 minutes in length. 

With short-form audio, as a listener, it’s easy to slip from one episode to the next when episodes are so bite-sized. You get to hear more topics with less fiddling with your podcast app interface. 

Much to marketers glee you also happen to get exposed to more ads and sponsored endorsements in a shorter amount of time.

Faster Pussycat
Our collective attention span has decreased to the extent that people are even getting impatient with the long-form content they’re consuming. 

YouTube notes that viewers often skip ahead many times during a long-form video. The platform recently introduced ‘chapters’ functionality to try to address this fact, so people could self-navigate, or curate longer-form content to reduce the time it takes to consume it.

YouTube viewers are also increasingly watching long-form videos at faster playback speeds. YouTube says 1.5x speed is the most common, with 2x coming in a close second. 

Now, for content creators and marketers the tidal shift to ‘snackable content’ has some benefits. It takes less time to create it, so you can create more and post more often. 

Because you are posting more frequently, your chances of getting a brand impression are higher – even though that impression might not be as deep.

Also, short form content feels more shareable, so your chances of consumer-amplified exposure are higher, too. 

Most importantly, you’re showing your audience that you value their time, that you are paying attention to how they want to have value delivered to them.

It Needs a Spark

One important consideration to bear in mind when creating this sort of content is something you might not have spent too much time thinking about. 

That’s ‘entertainment value’.

This is another notable side-effect of the TikTok phenomenon.

With short-form content, because your time communicating to the viewer is shorter, your content has to have a bit of ’spark’ to it. It has to have some energy. Maybe even a bit of fun.

Mainly because it could very well be bookended with a video showing the latest internet dance challenge and another one of a skateboard kick-flip fail.

That’s because the algorithms that are deciding what videos to serve up to you are still in the toddler-stuffing-Cheerios-into-the-dogs-nose phase of development. In fact a few of them, Instagram most notably, are pretty broken. 

Now, all this is not to propose that long-form content is going away. It’s not. There are some ideas and topics that you just can’t do justice to in short-form content.

Rest assured, the 5,000 word, SEO keyword packed, heavily referenced and backlinked blog post still has its place in the world.

Turning Tides

But when the tides change like this in the world of content and business, it’s best to be paying close attention. 

It’s never a bad idea to pause, re-evaluate your analytics and adjust your marketing efforts to be sure you’re still hitting the targets you’ve laid out, both for engagement and conversions.

The data in HubSpot’s 2022 video marketing report speaks for itself:

     •  Short-form video ranks #1 for lead generation and engagement

     •  Marketers will invest in short-form video more in 2022 than any other format

     •  85% of marketers say short-form videos are the most effective format on social media

With these stats in mind, if you aren’t actively experimenting with the creation of some type of ’snackable content’, you’re very possibly missing the biggest wave in social media since the invention of the Tweet.

Succeed in the Creative Economy - Verhaal Brand Design

Check out this great profile that Go Solo did on us on Substack via SubKit.

HERE’S THE ARTICLE

If you want to know more about Go Solo and SubKit:

GO SOLO on SubKit

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LinkedIn: @subkit

Twitter: @wearesubkit

The Marketing Miracle Diet

I’ve always been a tall person.

But for most of my life I was also pretty thin and could eat just about anything I wanted. It never affected me much.

My wife, Beth hated me for it.

But then, I hit middle age.

Slowly the proverbial ‘spare tire’ made an appearance. The progression was sneaky, a pound here, a pound there.

I just hadn’t been paying attention.

At 6’3” I’d always hovered around 185 lbs. But I realized somehow I had ballooned up to 225. None of my pants fit. Something had to be done.

So I asked Beth what I should do. She suggested that maybe I start counting calories.

Calories mattered? Who knew!

So I said to myself what any techie middle aged guy would say: “There’s gotta be an app for that!”

I found an app where you enter in everything you eat and it totals the calories so you can control your intake.

To tell you that I had no idea at all how many calories were in food would be an understatement.

Did you know a Hostess Apple pie, (which up until then qualified as ‘health food’ as far as I was concerned) has over 500 calories? That’s 1/4 of what my TOTAL daily intake was supposed to be!

So I counted. I paid attention. I tracked my numbers and put in the work.

And guess what? In just a few months I lost 40 pounds and got back down to 185.

So what does losing weight have to do with branding and marketing?

Maybe you have been using the same marketing tactics for years.

Running the same ads. The same copy. The same platforms.

Your results slip a little, a couple fewer leads each month,a little less engagement. Nothing dramatic.

Just a slow leak of branding effectiveness.

And suddenly you realize your brand has gained 40 pounds and is eating Twinkies on the couch at 11:00am on a Thursday.

Analytics really matter? Who knew!

So what’s the solution?

You start paying attention. Start tracking your numbers. Put in the work by changing some behaviors.

...I wish I could say that there is an app for that.

But there isn’t.

One Man Brand

You may not know this, but I’m not just a design and branding guy. I’m also a musician.

I’ve been playing guitar and bass since I was a pre-teen and am now learning to actually read music and play piano.

I’ve done multi-track recording from the days of 4-track cassette machines to today, recording digitally with Logic Pro.

The cool thing about multi-track recording is that you can play all the instruments yourself and sound like a huge band.

Which leads me to a TikTok video I saw yesterday that completely blew my mind.

Maybe you’ve seen it too.

It shows a somewhat chubby guy (hey, I’m not shaming here, the dudes got his bare belly hangin’ out and you can’t not see it) who’s playing the guitar, while he’s playing the drums and singing all at the same time.

He’s actually hitting the drums with a drum stick and strumming chords with the same hand simultaneously.

He sounds like a full-on rock band that’s pretty much kickin’ ass and takin’ names.

But he’s also working really damn hard to do it.

What kicked on my branding brain though was a comment someone left on the video:

“Why doesn’t he just get a couple pals to help out? Can you image how much more awesome he would be?”

When we consultants, freelancers and entrepreneurs first start running our businesses, we need to keep expenses low and take huge pride in doing everything ourselves.

We try to be a one-person band. We do the branding, the marketing, deliver the products and services, we do the books, we do all the admin.

In the beginning, we can kick out the jams solo for the most part.

But eventually one day we realize it’s really damn hard to do it that way.

And then we ask ourselves: What if I got a couple pals to help out?

We have to figure out how to scale.

Because when we do that, we find out how much more awesome we can be.

So Hot Right Now

Hoy Fung Sriracha, also known as "Rooster Sauce”, is a billion dollar brand.

The sauce was first produced in the 1930’s by a woman named Thanom Chakkapak in the town of Si Racha in Thailand.

Sriracha started off as a condiment for pho and fried noodles, but it now is also eaten in soup, jams, cocktails, eggs, burgers and even lollipops.

Hell, Lay’s even puts it in potato chips.

Sriracha is one of the most recognizable hot sauce brands in the world.

It has very distinctive packaging. A simple clear squeeze bottle with a white rooster illustration showcasing bright red product inside and a green cap.

But the most remarkable thing about Sriracha isn’t its popularity.

It’s how it got that popular. 

It’s that Sriracha became a billion dollar brand without advertising.

Not one dollar spent on ads.

Instead, Hoy Fung relied entirely on word-of-mouth.

A word-of-mouth marketing strategy relies entirely on the quality of the product.

It relies on the brand delivering a remarkable customer experience every single time.

But it only works if your product is so damn good that everyone wants to tell their family and friends about it.

So good that people can’t not talk about it.

And Sriracha is that damn good.

And that’s what Hoy Fung did. 

They delivered a consistently exhilarating flavor experience for 90 years.

Of course, word-of-mouth has existed since the beginning of time.

But with the mass adoption of the internet and the social sharing technologies that have come with it, the power of word-of-mouth has become supercharged.

You might even say red hot. *sorry, couldn’t resist*

So if you want your customers to do your advertising for you.

You have to start with the product.

Make it that damn good.

So people can’t not talk about it.

And let the internet take it from there

slip and slide

Something was happening at the house with the slip-and-slide.

What was happening was that there was a lot less happening.

A few blocks away from us is a house where the kids have a slip-and-slide that was an irresistible magnet to all the kids in the neighborhood when the weather got hot.

That yard was packed with neighborhood kids running around, getting wet, laughing their heads off.

But then it wasn’t, and the kids who lived there were wondering where all the other kids had gone.

What they didn’t know was that the family two doors down from us had recently purchased a palatial bouncy castle water slide complete with rotating sprinkler arms.

But the kids at the slip-and-slide house didn’t know that.

They just knew that no one was showing up to play.

Clients come to me with the same problem.

Customers aren’t showing up like they used to and they don’t really know why.

And they don’t know what to do about it.

When I am assessing a clients brand, one of the things that I am frequently amazed by are blind spots they have in really knowing who their competition is and what they are doing.

A competitive audit is one of the most illuminating phases in a brand re-design project.

How does your brand stack up to others in the competitive landscape?

How are they articulating the problem/solution/capabilities message to prospects in a compelling way?

How are they creating differentiation?

Assessing the competition invariably makes it very clear what the problem is and what needs to be addressed.

Because if you don’t know there’s a new bouncy castle water slide down the street…

You’re just going to be left standing in your yard wondering where everyone went.

Hot Then Not

Everything was going great in high school until that new guy showed up.

Let’s call him Fabio.

Fabio was tall, wore the coolest jeans, but what really did it was his hair.

Fabio had long hair and it was driving all the girls to distraction. All they could talk about was Fabio’s hair.

In the halls they were always staring at Fabio.

Fabio was hot.

It goes without saying that all the other guys in school were feeling - let’s just say: under-appreciated.

So what did they do? One by one they all started to grow their hair long.

Even that guy with curly hair. He was the only guy with curly hair. He had to grow it twice as long because it took twice as much to look long.

Now he just looked like everyone else.

Then it happened.

One day Fabio showed up to school with short hair.

Now short hair was hot.

The other guys were now thinking: ‘Damn, I just spent all this time growing my hair out. I used to have short hair! What was I thinking?’

Well, that’s what’s happening in social media right now:

Fabio is TikTok.

Long hair is short-form video.

And the curly haired guy is Instagram.

TikTok recently announced they are going to be accepting 10 minute videos soon

....and everyone else is still deeeep into growing their hair long.

In fact Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram just announced to accountholders that Reels weren’t going to replace photos. He said Instagram is ‘still’ committed to photography.

Even though it certainly doesn’t look like that to anyone paying attention.

The moral of the story is that one minute what is hot, the next minute will very likely be not.

So it’s usually best to hold on to your core competency.

I’m not saying short-form video is going away. It’s not.

But when everyone starts looking just like Fabio...something is bound to change.

The Numbers Game

Before I was a branding guy, I was a fine artist.
I actually have a masters degree in painting - not graphic design. Graphic design I picked up along the way. But that’s a story for another day.

What I really want to tell you about is one of my favorite artists of all time, Pablo Picasso.

In his lifetime Picasso created over 150,000 works of art. Drawings, sculptures, prints, engravings, murals, ceramic sand paintings.

It could be argued that he was one of the most prolific artists in history.

He banged stuff out right and left. Boom, there’s another drawing.

His studio was literally littered with...well, Picasso’s.

Boom, here’s another one...

He didn’t get caught up in perfection.

Now, let me ask you a question:

How many of these 150k works of art are considered to be masterpieces today?

Probably less than 100.

I know there is some curator out there turning red in the face right now thinking...”But every Picasso is a masterpiece!”

The fact is, less than .5% of the artistic content he produced ever mattered in the long run.

So if you’re creatively stuck and are being a perfectionist about that one piece of content you have had on your marketing ‘to do’ list for weeks...

Bang it out.

Because creating masterpieces is a numbers game.

You just have to start.

All Together Now

Somewhere along the line when I was coming up in my professional career and just starting to pay attention to business and brands and marketing, I heard an interesting little factoid that stuck with me:

There has never been a major war in a country that has McDonald's.

At the time, this is how I parsed that statement:

Big companies and global capitalism is so invested in making money that they (by hook, crook, or political maneuvering) won’t allow a war to disrupt commerce in any way.

It said that big business controls us all, controls culture, that we exist to serve them.

But something happened a few weeks ago that made me question that assumption.

What happened was that McDonald's announced it was closing 850 stores in Russia in response to that nations unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

For a monolith like McD’s to close 850 stores as a show of solidarity, as a reflection of the will of the people to protest, to sanction, to fight back is pretty freakin’ cool if you ask me.

Cool, because it shows me that big business can serve us.

When we unite, we control them.

And because McDonald's listened and responded to the will of the people, they increased their brand loyalty in the hearts and minds of billions around the world.

It gives new meaning to the words on their signs:

"Billions and Billions Served".

12 Trends in Graphic Design for 2022

Let's look at 12 Trends in Graphic Design for 2022!

Trends are movements in design that have gained wide enough usage that they can actually be recognized as a trend. They aren't necessarily brand new. In fact, very little is. Very few things have actually never, ever been done before.

I recommend using trends to stay inspired. You can either follow them or you can consciously react against them. But knowing what is trending is critical to informing your work and to informing your clients.

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Trend #1: Diversity + Inclusivity

Design has always been instrumental in facilitating changes in society. Large, fortune 500 companies are now responding to societal changes in areas of diversity and inclusivity and bringing it into the mainstream.

Ethnic diversity, mixed-race couples and families have been depicted in design for years now, but diversity in gender, sexual orientation, and physical ability are becoming much more prevalent and visible.

We're seeing it grow considerably in traditional advertising media, in VR, in illustration, iconography, and stock imagery. Expect this trend to magnify in 2022, as acceptance continues to grow domestically in the U.S. as well as internationally

Trend #2: Metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg has made dramatic pronouncements about Meta's intention to making avatar-inhabited virtual environments a priority for the company.

It's unclear exactly what this world is going to look like or what you'll be able to do or accomplish there, but it's not stopping designers, gaming platforms, illustrators, and animators from starting to visually predict and to depict it.

Any design that can happen in real life, billboards, products, ads, branded environments, t-shirts, branded products will undoubtedly come to life in the Metaverse, probably things we haven't even imagined yet.

Designers are going to be on bleeding edge of finding ways to leverage this new virtual ecosystem to their advantage for both themselves and for their clients

Trend #3: DataViz

We live in a data-rich, and some may say, absolutely saturated world these days. Infographics have been around for years now, but there's a new trend on how the format is being explored.

But typical infographics have lost their appeal and their thumb scroll stopping power so more radical layouts, more inventive imagery, not just the same old icons and stock characters are being used.

It's being done in order to cut through the infographic noise. Infographics are becoming much more creative, inventive, playful, and original illustration-driven designs.

Trend #4: Muted Tones

This is a trend that's emerging where colors that are being used are much more muted, softer, they're less jarring.

It is a reaction against the intense colors that were being used in last year's 2021 trends like “Electric Fade” and “Bright Geo”. Trends frequently emerge that are reactions against other trends and muted tones is definitely one of those.

You'll see that this trend bears out Pantone's Color of the Year choice that I'm going to feature later in this video. The colors used are soft pastels and cosmetic pinks, taupes, and blues.

This trend shows up in consumer package goods, stock photography, fashion, and apparel.

Trend #5: Vintage Apothecary

Vintage Apothecary celebrates vintage typography, flowing, elongated serifs, and ornate borders. 18th-century black and white etching illustrations are also prominently featured in this design style.

This trend shows up in beverages, in food packaging, health and beauty aids, t-shirt design, candles, and the gift industry. It references the Steampunk Movement and is recognized by overlaying detailed layouts and vintage illustration styles.

Vintage Apothecary hearkens back to a simpler time when things weren't mass-produced by the millions, but instead in small, handcrafted batches with real care and real quality.

Trend #6: Eco Everything

Global warming isn't a debate anymore, it's happening much faster than anyone ever thought possible.

The eco-movement, focusing on sustainability and reducing the human carbon footprint in virtually everything we do, make, or use just continues to grow. It's no longer fringe, it's almost a requirement for companies to stake a claim with their consumers about where they stand on the environment.

The days of “greenwashing”, that is giving lip service to sustainability, are long gone. Designers are leading the charge in finding ever more impactful and engaging ways to communicate and market products and services in the green economy.

You can see this trend in hard, good products, in packaging, physical environments, illustration, books, and in color palettes.

Trend #7: Iridescence

Iridescence is somewhat of a continuation of last year's trend that I called “Electric Fade”, it's also related to the Vaporwave trend of a few years ago. But Iridescence is made possible by new, innovative print substrate materials that have reflective and light amplifying properties.

This trend is being seen in technology marketing, in the sportswear industry, in iconography systems and print, AR and VR. It's also beginning to show up in interface design.

I wouldn't be surprised if it actually finds its way into the Metaverse too.

The shapes associated with it can be curve linear and flowing like neon tubing, or they can be sharp and defined and angular in geometric cubes, in geological crystal shapes.

Trend #8: Modular Geo

Modular Geo is an evolution of the “Bright Geo” trend that I featured in my 2021 trend video.

The color used as flat and unmodulated, many times a primary palette is used of bright reds, blues, and yellows. The shapes used in this trend are circles and squares, triangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids.

The aesthetics of the Modular Geo trend have hints of the work of fine artists like Mondrian and Matisse, as well as the work of early Bauhaus design. This trend is being used in print and poster design, packaging, environmental wayfinding, and editorial illustration.

Trend #9: Trippy Type

Sometimes trend happen in pairs, with two diametrically opposed aesthetics that are polar opposites of each other. This is the case with trippy type, it's the polar opposite of the sharp lines and misstructured, rigid compositions that you find in Modular Geo.

This trend is signified by 60s and early 70s, psychedelic typography. Often it's hand-illustrated in shapes with that type and shape itself becoming the primary element or the main focus of the design.

You'll find this trend in new font design, in printed books, illustration, consumer goods, food packaging, fashion, and even motion graphics.

Trend #10: Moving Marks

It's not like animated logos have never been seen before, but it's the extent at which we're seeing them that has really changed.

Animated logo gifs are showing up on corporate email blasts, on website headers, and in apps on a regular basis now. It's the true definition of a trend, a more fringe movement and experimental one that's gained a lot of popular usage that it can now be considered trending.

What's remarkable is the enterprise-size companies that are starting to use these logos ‘on the regular’, as opposed to only periodically in ads on traditional broadcast media.

It's just another indication that “everything is going to video”, even the simple, static company logo can't be counted on anymore to stand still!

Trend #11: True Grit

True Grit isn't so much of a design style per se as it is a treatment. This trend is recognized by the usage of rough, distressed textures and textural overlays that make images and text look like it's weathered or partially destroyed. It's a reaction against the clean type and stripe design of modular geo or Bauhaus or Swiss Design.

This trend shows up across a broad range of design genres and it's used to add a level of visual interest to a design by aging it, by giving it provenance or history, by adding character.

True Grit shows up in t-shirt design, print and posters, in the music industry, in motion graphics, and also in broadcast entertainment.

Trend #12: Very Peri

Pantone's color of the year for 2022 is called Very Peri, it's basically the color periwinkle. It's not a graphic design trend in and of itself, it's a color story trend. Last year in 2021, Pantone named “Illuminating Yellow” and”Ultimate Gray” as the colors of the year.

But the popular zeitgeist in society has moved towards embracing colors that are more calming and muted like trend #4, Muted Tones, featured above.

Because of the ongoing collective psychological stress of the COVID pandemic, Pantone is forecasting and encouraging a more comforting look for 2022.

This color trend is already being heavily adopted, and you can see it being used everywhere in product design, website design, sports apparel, editorial print, promotional marketing, travel, entertainment, even the financial industry.

I hope you liked this article and the linked YouTube video “12 Trends in Graphic Design for 2022”.

If you were somehow inspired by this trend review, do me a favor and forward it to a colleague or share it on social media! Share the inspiration! I'd really appreciate it and your colleagues will too.

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