If you don’t have an antagonist, do you have a point?

14 Mar 2025

When I was researching for our Brand 2.0 report and doing lots of listening/reading/watching on the art collective not so art collective MSCHF. I was out on a walk grabbing a coffee on a Saturday morning and walked past Daunt Books and stumbled upon their recent book MADE BY MSCHF.

The front section apart from some great essays they also have a handbook of principles or kind of statements/memes that guide them. Some of the best articulation of guardrails to help a creative process I've ever seen.

I added a few of them into the report.

The ‘if you don’t have an antagonist, do you have a point?’ is just great. It’s looking at where that tension lies within the work. What is it actually saying? Is it punching against something? Is there a sharpness to the work?

‘Concepts that slap in one sentence and slap harder in three’. Can you articulate the strat/idea even design in one line? And if you develop it further, does it make it even better… or start distracting or degrading it?

I talk a lot in the report about a new production model. They make the point of ‘people remember the first thing they saw, the best thing and the most recent thing’. We all overthink, over intellectualise and overcomplicate a lot of work in the end making us so afraid to create, produce and put it out in the world. People don’t view things in linear ways. A small % of people will see your work, even notice it and even think it’s to do with your brand. We’re fighting against people's busy and messy lives and really algorithms. So be prolific, not a perfectionist.

Last one, this is more I see around brand guidelines. A lot of the time from my experience they have the best intentions but become enforced like a straightjacket. ‘Don’t invent constraints for yourself (brand), when you don’t need to give yourself the chance of success and sometimes that needs flexibility in how your brand shows up. Consistency is key but also being unexpected is what people sit up and notice.

Worth a read!