60 Apps, Hacks & Resources for Creating Brilliant Marketing Visuals on a Budget — G R A P H I C S DESIGN Free and low-cost tools to create beautiful graphics for non-professional designers. Canva Still the best all-around tool for non-professionals to create and edit all kinds of visual content — from logos and social media assets to presentations and websites. Pricing: Free with limited features. The Pro plan is $119.99 annually or…

9 Shining Examples We Can All Learn a Little Something From — I’m a sucker for great hero sections. Having battled through a few of my own, I appreciate the thoughtfulness and restraint involved in getting them just right. They are also a brand’s most consequential piece of digital real estate. Because in about the time it takes for a page to…

My battle with the ‘publish button’ and how I’m working to win it. — If you’ve been to see a behavioral therapist in the last 50 years, chances are you’ve been exposed to the work of Albert Ellis. But long before his pioneering work in Psychology, Albert Ellis was an awkward college kid, desperate to overcome his social anxiety around the opposite sex. At…

Start by Asking a Different Question — Most of the traditional methods for defining a brand are based on the idea that a brand is made up of a collection of attributes, among which include; a brand’s purpose, positioning, values, vision, personality, voice and visual identity. The use of these attributes helps us to make sense of…

A More Down-To-Earth Definition That Any Business Can Apply The first year into launching my practice as a freelance brand strategist was filled with mistakes and lessons. Among them was assuming I could simply copy and paste what I had learned about brand building in the context of big agencies and consumer brands, onto my much smaller, mostly Midwestern…

In Praise of Small Things (Notes from Spain) When we’re chasing growth, the tendency is not towards the small or incremental. We want big results, so we assume it takes big, sweeping actions to get there. But often times the biggest difference makers are much more nuanced. Thoughtful touches that…

There has never been a better time to be civically engaged. Citizen access to information and infrastructure is transforming the practice of democracy. From our social networks to our smartphones, we are more connected, more informed and more empowered than ever before. But with so many ways to exercise our…

Inspired by a Holstee piece on getting curious about where you are, I recently visited a neighborhood art gallery located just a few blocks from my apartment. But this wasn’t just any gallery. It happened to be located inside of one of Atlanta’s most notorious homeless shelters. I’d driven by…