Worlds Over Words

Most brands are too literal. They try to explain themselves into relevance. That’s dumb.

Because life isn’t experienced verbally first, it’s experienced through senses first, emotionally perceived, and only later translated into language. Words are multiple steps down the inference ladder, and they take mental effort.

Remember that all communication is mostly non-verbal: We rely on signals like body-language, cultural norms, and the physical environment. We situate ourselves in context, we anticipate, we sense, and we feel.

That always comes first.

Words are abstract symbols, even before we get to a word we’ve already scanned the page and had a reaction to it based on the visual layout and context.

So, again:

We sense.
We feel.
We interpret later.

Are you starting to see the danger of overeliance on words?

That’s why worlds come before words. Because strategy is not planning, design is not decoration, and delivery is not execution.

Words are one tool. Feeling is the system, it’s the infrastructure words run on, and it needs to be engineered with intention through a strategically designed brand world for the words to really mean anything.