blog post image

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
blog post image

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
blog post image

Branding and the Aura: A Meditation on Walter Benjamin and the Practice of Presence

In 1935, cultural theorist Walter Benjamin published “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” a landmark essay exploring how technologies of mass duplication—especially photography and film—alter the meaning and impact of the original. His concern wasn’t just aesthetic, but philosophical. What happens, he asked, when art is untethered from its singular, physical […]

Dec 1 2025 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink
blog post image

Branding as Time Travel

At Otherwise, while exploring metaphors that allow us to look at branding from new angles. we’ve recently been intrigued by a set of studies in cognitive science suggesting that the human brain processes language and music in fundamentally different ways—each tuned to time, but in strikingly different registers. When we process language, we read (or […]

Nov 18 2025 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink
blog post image

The Peril of Perfect Moments

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut conjures a world in which time is not linear but fixed — all moments exist simultaneously, and humans, like insects in amber, are stuck inside them. “Trapped in the amber of this moment,” he writes, evoking both the beauty and the horror of timelessness. It’s a vivid metaphor for what happens […]

Nov 9 2025 by Nancy Lerner in Brandshrink

Archives