Judging the RGD Branding Awards

Most weeks, I spend more time than I'd like talking about timelines, budgets, and how to do more with less. That's the reality of running a creative studio right now.

The conversations around our work have shifted. Everyone wants faster, cheaper, lighter. It's easy to start believing that's just what design is now.

Then every once in a while, you see a piece of work that reminds you it isn't. Work that took months of craft, not seconds of prompting. A brand system with a real idea behind it. An identity built around strategy, not a trend. Work that's hard to call a commodity once you see it sitting in front of you.

That's part of why I said yes when RGD asked me to judge this year's Branding Awards. That's what these awards are to me — a proof point. Evidence that the craft is still here, and still capable of doing what good design has always done: make people feel something, move a business forward, tell a story worth telling.