I build verbal identity systems — naming, voice, and the language architecture underneath both.
A brand is a truth given form. The truth is found; the form is shaped.
Most language in branding has been created — assembled from references, competitive scans, category conventions. Little of it has been originated: found already present in the work, the decisions, the refusals, and given a holdable shape.
The practical difference is what the method ends in. Creation optionizes — five taglines, three routes, a moodboard to choose from. Origination converges on the line that could not have been otherwise. A menu is a sign the diving stopped too early.
MinkNote Self-initiated
A verbal identity study for a native macOS notes app whose entire claim is non-intervention. I derived three voice principles from the product's own refusal, then killed two directions that failed them — including the protection metaphor the whole privacy category reaches for.
Tide & Term Self-initiated spec
A verbal identity system for an invented premium maternity brand. The category defaults to clinical, which earns trust but feels cold, or cutesy, which feels warm but loses credibility. The truth it keeps skipping: with a newborn, a mother is born too.
From that I built a system a team could run without me in the room — one governing rule, a tone dial weighted per touchpoint, a working lexicon of what the brand says and refuses, and a self-naming SKU format so the range scales without a naming meeting every launch.