Cover Brand: Liberating Ideas

Cat How joined Ethan for a shop talk episode. She's founder and executive creative director of How Studio, six years in now, teams running in both London and LA, with a stack of award show judging credits and a spot on more than one influential-women-in-marketing list behind her.  She and Ethan dug into three of her recent launches together, and each one carries a different lesson about how branding actually works.

The first is Ideogram, a generative AI company that came to How Studio needing a brand, which is its own small irony. They dug into some lessons and the complexity of taking on a project for Gen Ai company.

The second is Bristol Dockyards, a museum built around the historic ship SS Great Britain, sitting on a genuinely complicated history the city has struggled to reckon with. The rebrand leans on an unexpected color choice, and the conversation gets into what makes a bold creative swing actually work.

The third is How Studio itself, mid rebrand for the fourth time in six years. Kat ran an audit of competing branding agencies and found ninety percent had no house color at all, black and white, despite color being the exact thing they sell clients. 

This week's cover song: Sinead O'Connor's 1990 rendition of Nothing Compares 2 U, written by Prince for his side project The Family in 1984, and turned into something entirely her own.

How Studio: https://how.studio

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