
Being Best Beats Being First
Being first rarely wins anymore. In a fast moving market, underdogs iterate faster, learn from others' mistakes, and take the lead unless patents or relentless innovation protect an early edge.
Short, practical perspectives on market stance, differentiation, and brand strategy — focused on what actually moves the needle for founder‑led service firms.
Being first rarely wins anymore. In a fast moving market, underdogs iterate faster, learn from others' mistakes, and take the lead unless patents or relentless innovation protect an early edge.
Drop the buzzwords and watch how primal Friend or Foe instincts shape every click. Build consistency, character, and reassurance, or keep losing silent prospects who never call back.
It's tempting to jam your corporate identity full of bells and whistles, but the strongest identities are still the simplest ones. When designing a logo, it's easy to go overboard. There are so many great elements you can work with (colors, textures, patterns, shapes, borders, typography, gradients,…
Science fiction’s bleak futures mirror your customers’ daily frustrations. Trade quick wins for human-centered marketing that honors real lives and belonging. Solve problems, restore connection, and watch your brand grow.
Agile began as a manifesto and became an industry. When design teams adapt it without dogma, tension turns into flow, scope changes stop derailing, and client collaboration beats paperwork.
In our line of work, effective project management is absolutely essential. At any given time we have 15-20 projects going on, all with dozens (if not hundreds) of individual tasks involved. We’ve tried countless project management applications, trying to find one that can meet the demanding criteria…
The basic elements of highly successful online videos are really just fundamental principles of human interaction, and you can apply to nearly any form of communication (especially marketing). While there's no way to guarantee that anything will "go viral," studying and applying those basic elements…
When people talk about their company’s target audience, you typically hear things like “individuals between the ages of 13 and 25 who enjoy playing video games and have a mobile phone,” or “active consumers between the ages of 25 and 45 who like to hike and rock climb” or “procurement officers at Fo…
Smell sells. Tap scent marketing’s subconscious power to lift mood, memory, and sales. Choose simple, context-smart fragrances, tune the intensity, and watch productivity rise without customers noticing why.
Stop casting wider nets and fix the holes. Competitive CEOs chase metrics while customers crave emotion. Talk to people, design sticky experiences, and watch each effort land more loyal customers.
If your team was the last surviving band of humans in a city overrun by zombies, you wouldn't let just anybody through the door would you?
When designing a logo, it’s easy to go overboard. There are so many great elements you can work with (colors, textures, patterns, shapes, borders, typography, gradients, icons, etc.) that it’s tempting to include a little bit of everything to get your point across. In a massively oversaturated media…
As much as our work at Forty is about “touchy-feely” stuff (psychology, emotion, metaphor, experiences, etc.), I’m still a numbers guy at heart. That’s why I get so frustrated every time I hear someone recommending crowdsourced design services like [99designs](https://web.archive.org/web/20130115155…
We’re naturally attracted to people and brands that stand for something, and we’re suspicious of those that try to mold themselves around our preferences. Imagine this. You’re on a blind date. > You: “So, where do you want to go?” Date: “Wherever you want to go.” You: “Maybe dinner? What kind of foo…
Archetypes are based on the idea of universal, reoccurring characters or personifications that represent something fundamental about the ways we identify ourselves and relate to the world around us. A few years ago, we began the process of gathering raw archetypes from as many sources as we could. I…