Who Are You?
Who Are You?
Who Are You?
Who Are You?
So, where do you want to go?
Who do you want to be perceived as?
Which path are you going to take?
These are questions many of us have asked ourselves throughout the course of our education, career, or life in general. I recently have been pondering on them because I have been thinking about stories that make people think.
One of these stories is Alice in Wonderland, many of you already know this story, but the part I would love to focus on is Alice’s interaction with the Cheshire Cat.
Alice reaches a fork in the road and as she contemplates which path to take, she is confronted by the Cheshire Cat, of whom Alice asks, “Which path shall I follow?” The cat replies, “That depends where you want to go. If you do not know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.”
While there are certainly times where we are faced with choices of moving on from where we currently are and finding some new opportunity or staying put with the opportunities ahead of where we’re at. We face the true issue at hand: Indecision.
Act Fast, but Be Smart
Now, indecision doesn’t mean the inability to make decisions, it specifically means the inability to make quick decisions. This skill is needed when we are truly given two great options.
Just before graduating college, I worked for a Notebook company called Denik. I loved it there, I got to work with so many amazing companies' brand identities and learn the ins and outs of production setup and the work as a whole. However, just after I hit one year there, I was approached with a new opportunity to do design work I was actually interested in.
If you don’t have aspirations, then you don’t need a plan. And if you don’t need a plan, you’re accepting whatever outcome shows up. If you don’t know what you want to be, what you want to do, or where you’re headed, then what is the purpose of getting started at all? Motion feels productive, but without direction it rarely becomes meaningful.
The opportunity to leave my current job designing notebook covers didn’t seem glamorous. I truly didn’t know where it would take me, but I knew that if there were ever a time to take a chance on myself, now was it.
Knowing who you are as a person, as a brand, as an employer, as a member of your family is crucial because every decision you make, post you make reinforces or contradicts your brand. Brands don’t get the luxury of being undefined. If they don’t define themselves, the market will.
Direction Isn’t Optional
Let’s take, for example, a project I worked on just over a year ago. As a creative exercise, I took a business that lacked direction in its branding and imagined how it could look with that direction applied. What existed was functional. Forgettable. Neutral.
But competence without character rarely earns loyalty. A lack of identity doesn’t create safety for a brand, it makes it easy to forget. And being forgotten is often worse than being disliked.
In a world where attention spans are shrinking, car washes and soda shops have turned to creating extensive brand systems and true identities. Every business is being forced to answer the same question: Who are you?
So, where do you want to go?
Who do you want to be perceived as?
Which path are you going to take?
These are questions many of us have asked ourselves throughout the course of our education, career, or life in general. I recently have been pondering on them because I have been thinking about stories that make people think.
One of these stories is Alice in Wonderland, many of you already know this story, but the part I would love to focus on is Alice’s interaction with the Cheshire Cat.
Alice reaches a fork in the road and as she contemplates which path to take, she is confronted by the Cheshire Cat, of whom Alice asks, “Which path shall I follow?” The cat replies, “That depends where you want to go. If you do not know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.”
While there are certainly times where we are faced with choices of moving on from where we currently are and finding some new opportunity or staying put with the opportunities ahead of where we’re at. We face the true issue at hand: Indecision.
Act Fast, but Be Smart
Now, indecision doesn’t mean the inability to make decisions, it specifically means the inability to make quick decisions. This skill is needed when we are truly given two great options.
Just before graduating college, I worked for a Notebook company called Denik. I loved it there, I got to work with so many amazing companies' brand identities and learn the ins and outs of production setup and the work as a whole. However, just after I hit one year there, I was approached with a new opportunity to do design work I was actually interested in.
If you don’t have aspirations, then you don’t need a plan. And if you don’t need a plan, you’re accepting whatever outcome shows up. If you don’t know what you want to be, what you want to do, or where you’re headed, then what is the purpose of getting started at all? Motion feels productive, but without direction it rarely becomes meaningful.
The opportunity to leave my current job designing notebook covers didn’t seem glamorous. I truly didn’t know where it would take me, but I knew that if there were ever a time to take a chance on myself, now was it.
Knowing who you are as a person, as a brand, as an employer, as a member of your family is crucial because every decision you make, post you make reinforces or contradicts your brand. Brands don’t get the luxury of being undefined. If they don’t define themselves, the market will.
Direction Isn’t Optional
Let’s take, for example, a project I worked on just over a year ago. As a creative exercise, I took a business that lacked direction in its branding and imagined how it could look with that direction applied. What existed was functional. Forgettable. Neutral.
But competence without character rarely earns loyalty. A lack of identity doesn’t create safety for a brand, it makes it easy to forget. And being forgotten is often worse than being disliked.
In a world where attention spans are shrinking, car washes and soda shops have turned to creating extensive brand systems and true identities. Every business is being forced to answer the same question: Who are you?