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The Power of Symbols in Times of Uncertainty

There are moments in history when language begins to lose its footing. It isn’t that people stop caring, or that they no longer feel compelled to express themselves. Quite the opposite. The urgency remains. But words themselves begin to feel insufficient—too exposed, too contested, too easily stripped of nuance or turned against their speaker. In […]

Feb 23 2026 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink
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Learning to Read the Moment: What the I Ching Teaches Us About Branding, Identity, and the Art of Change

Long before strategy became a slide deck — and long before branding became a discipline — there was the I Ching, the Book of Changes. A text both poetic and practical, ancient and strangely modern, the I Ching has guided human beings through transitions for more than three millennia. It’s been used not as a […]

Feb 8 2026 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink
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In Search of Resonance: What if brands worked by synchronization?

In the rarefied world of haute horology, few timepieces have stirred philosophical awe quite like François-Paul Journe’s Chronomètre à Résonance. It’s built on the centuries-old principle that two vibrating bodies, when placed in close proximity, will begin to oscillate in synchrony. In this example, the watch does does the work of telling time. But it […]

Jan 26 2026 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink
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In the Space Between: Branding at the Edge of Knowing

Every act of branding is, at heart, an act of definition — a declaration of who we are, what we stand for, and how we wish to be understood. But there’s a paradox embedded in that work: to define is also, inevitably, to reduce. And in the rush to name, clarify, or codify, something vital […]

Jan 3 2026 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink
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Occam’s Razor and the Art of Brand Clarity

At Otherwise, we’re drawn to ideas that hold power in their precision — frameworks that slice through the noise without losing the depth. One such idea, borrowed from the worlds of logic, theology, and philosophy, is Occam’s Razor. Often misquoted, often misunderstood, but always useful. A brief history of the blade The principle that would […]

Dec 15 2025 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink

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