After successfully completing the #100DayProject, Emotive Brand is thrilled to launch the Art of Symbols, a website exploring how ancient symbols inform contemporary brand design. Check it out!

The Art of Symbols

As previously discussed, the 100DayProject is a free art project started by Lindsay Thomson that takes place online. Every spring, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity.

“It’s a lot to commit to, 100 variations on a theme,” said Jonathan Haggard, Senior Designer. “Just like creating anything, the first 90 are the expected and routine, and it’s not until you feel like you’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel that the truly creative stuff comes out.”

The Power of Side Projects

At Emotive Brand, we’ve long believed that side-projects are not only important to keep us inspired and flex new creative muscles, but that it makes our client work much stronger.

“Side projects are critical for me,” continued Jonathan. “I like to keep my momentum going, so when I have a few hours in between client work, I can fill that with some creative exercise. This also pushes me outside of my comfort zone and allows me to learn about subject matter that I may be curious about, but haven’t had a reason to pursue.”

In terms of our next project, we will be exploring Emotive Branding—our methodology of digging deep into a brand’s products and services and finding emotional connections to the needs, beliefs, interests, and aspirations of its target audiences. It’s about aiming for a meaningful outcome from your commercial endeavors, and recognizing that when you touch people in meaningful ways, they pay you back.

Emotive Branding

When it comes to brand strategy, you may not always have all the answers—but chances are, you know exactly how you want your brand to make people feel. If you can hone in on that emotional impact: your employees work with greater purpose and get more satisfaction from their work, your customers become more loyal, and your supply and distribution chains become more responsive to your needs.

This isn’t about creating “emotional” advertising that gets people all misty-eyed about your widgets. Rather, it is about conveying meaning and evoking emotions that draw people closer to you—and sets you apart from your competition. When brands deliver in these ways, it is one of the most powerful ways to differentiate, grow revenue, hire top talent, and more easily deliver customer success stories.

“We are in the process of bringing new life to the 300+ emotions we use with all of our clients,” said Beth Abrahamson, Senior Designer. “Emotions are super intangible and super personal—one feeling can mean twenty different things to twenty different people. We hope that by honing in our interpretation of them, we can provide clients with an Emotive Branding language that is relatable, impactful, and artful.”

Whether you’re an artist, an agency, or just an avid fan of symbols and their histories, we hope you enjoy exploring the Art of Symbols. And as always, keep an eye on our Instagram to stay up to date with our creative projects.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.