style over brand
A brand is a symbol of consistency and dependability; typically when a person is loyal to a brand, their loyalty is to what the brand promises to deliver. Brand stability – being able to keep that promise – requires fixed standards upheld by rigid systems.
The standards and systems that maintain brand stability also eliminate countless decisions in the way a person or entity performs to the world; every element of presentation is predetermined, with only the content changing. This is helpful for creating and replicating success in the attention economy, making personal branding an attractive strategy to individuals – it saves them time and energy while acting as a kind of shorthand to help establish feelings of “know / like / trust” with others.
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Branding ourselves is to create a fixed persona, relegating less palatable parts of ourselves to the anti-brand. We communicate a promise to perform one way indefinitely – a promise we make in exchange for the privilege of less choice. At its extreme, this can lead to an immutable identity; you “foreclose” on “your prerogative to change” (Klein, pg. 51).
Social media has become the default container for brand presentation. It aids in, and requires, the distillation of the self into a flattened profile, which can participate in the mirage of a community but whose purpose is to be a data mine.
When you rely less on social media – and extractive platforms in general – the less beneficial it is for you to contort yourself into a brand, and the less appealing it becomes.
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We might consider elements of style instead.
Style introduces flexible structure that creativity can flourish within in between; it can remove the monotonous decisions without communicating a promise, a guarantee, an obligation. You can “[c]ollect constraints you enjoy” (https://stephango.com/style).
These constraints can be added, removed, edited, broken, subverted, either combined or on their own. Maybe you only follow all of the rules on Mondays. Maybe you treat your style guide like a menu the rest of the time.
A brand is a restraint; style is play.
last modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago