Another Awesome

Travel is one of the best ways to spend time because you learn more about how others live – and yourself. Standing outside your culture for a time is an excellent catalyst for self-reflection.

I've been fortunate to spend time in Seoul and Tokyo in the last month. It was mostly family time, but I couldn't help but think about brand issues and our clients. Here are a few observations and helpful reminders after looking at home from abroad.

So much of our world is the result of the cross-pollination of ideas. It's hard not to see the influence of Japanese shoji screens on modernist geometry in Europe and America, just like it's hard to imagine American rock and roll without the British Invasion.

Some graphic designers may remember Emigre Magazine, an influential publication from the 1990s (and type foundry today). Founded by Dutchmen working in San Francisco, the premise was that foreigners experienced and interpreted a local culture through non-local eyes. A fresh look at culture can be the source of creative ideas and happy accidents.

Funny Words

Just like Westerners getting Chinese tattoos (if that's you, please be careful to get it right), many Asians think English words sound and look cool. Some word combinations are amusing because they don't entirely make sense to English-speaking ears. These could be understandable errors from non-native speakers. However, they could be part of the joke. Examples include Additea (To Be Continued?), Please Pizza, and Meet Me Home. There are too many to count, but they're easy to find.

A great example is Another Awesome, a retail clothing store all over Seoul. It seems unlikely that a native English speaker would come up with this name because it is odd or sounds incomplete. On the other hand, it's pretty great! It works, is memorable, understandable, and – wait for it – probably not taken by some other company.

At this point, many of the obvious names, taglines, and URLs are taken. Breaking the grammar –?deliberately or not –?can lead to surprising results.

Brand builders: Breaking rules?can be a path toward originality.

All directions

Just as I wanted memorabilia from a trip abroad, foreign cities sound exotic to local Koreans and Japanese. It's great to think how people in other places imagine what it's like in the exotic USA. Sure, there was plenty of NYC and LA, but also Atlanta and Boston.

Just as many Westerners are ignorant of Asian geography, it's not always obvious where these places are. When a California baseball cap needs to state that it's in the US, it's clear that neither the wearer nor the observer necessarily knows where California is. California is a brand in and of itself, a mystical place with its own meaning. To my surprise and delight, Michigan (where I live) is a pretty popular brand abroad. Michigan was number three behind NYC and LA.

Brand builders: The unknown can be exotic.

Old Can be New

Novelty can come in different forms. Business students may be familiar with the Ansoff Matrix, a simple but helpful way to consider your audiences and offerings. For example, you can grow by promoting your current offering to new customers or new offerings to current customers.

I saw this in action with brands like National Geographic, BBC Earth, Discovery, and Kellogg's, which sold as fashion brands. Not only that, but industrial and older technology brands made for good merch – Bosch, Ricoh, Dell, MetLife. These were perhaps something else entirely, like funny English words: ironic business brands like esoteric finds at vintage shops.

For some, it may be about age in addition to location, as younger people have no direct contact with any of these brands. They may sound like something out of Mad Men.

Brand builders: What's old for you can be new for others.

Forgive me for not having a deep analysis here; I was just a tourist.

A new place is a great way to stimulate new thinking – which is mostly what I do when I'm not on vacation.