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Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
"Modern heritage is about tension" (Mike Perry bonus episode)
00:08:55
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Transcript9 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and digging deeper in what makes them special. This week I spoke to Mike Perry, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Tavern, a Brooklyn based branding and packaging agency. Mike himself has gone from designing punk posters and working for Sub Pop to now leading global brand work in our conversation that focuses so much on branding and world of brands, Mark shared with me why timelessness is built on tension, why ebay beats Pinterest every time, and why he is wildly optimistic about the future of branding. The episode published a few days ago was titled Dare to Build a World, not just a Brand. And if you haven't checked out our full episode yet, let me share with you these four standout moments.
- [00:55]
B
Balancing that tension of which is modern heritage. Literally, it's like balancing the tension between heritage and modernity. You always need to. You need to be in conflict with that to get there. And I think that when you have that and there is tension, that should equal timelessness if done correctly, repeatedly, time and time again, and protected. But that's the hard part, is the repetition of the tension.
- [01:18]
A
It's one of those words that you don't exactly expect to show up, but when you think about it, it's so imperative. The word tension is doing something important here. It's not a problem to solve, it's the engine. The most brown thinking tries to reconcile the past and the future too cleanly, landing somewhere safe and forgettable in the middle. Marx's argument is that you should never really fully resolve that conflict. Keep that fictional life, let the heritage pull one way and modernity pull the other and work in that uncomfortable space between them. That's where originality actually lives. It's also what separates brands that feel genuinely alive from ones that just look current trend led work has no tension, it simply follows. Modern heritage demands that you hold two opposing truths simultaneously and make something coherent out of the struggle. As Mike puts it, that friction isn't a side effect of the process, it is the process.
- [02:22]
B
Yes, and this is maybe a cliche, but we as designers and as creative agencies are literally on these brands most of the time, far longer than the brand managers. They kind of they'll shift off one to three years. Three years is kind of a lot even they shift off and they transition to brands and brands. That's just how a lot of these brands, at least my entire branding experience has been. And I again, maybe it's the cliche, but we are involved a lot more and we should care a lot more and we should be. We have to be the guardians because no one else is. The umbrella company that's holding all of these brands is not the guardian in the same way. They want delivery, quarter delivery. Fair enough.
- [03:04]
A
It was a great revealing moment because it kind of made me think of the parallel of work we've been doing with Brand New for years, where sometimes you're lucky if the brand manager stays for more than two, three, four years. It's almost unique in a way when you think about it. This moment reframes the entire agency relationship in one observation. Those brand managers are not villains here. They are just working within a system that rewards short term impact over long term stewardship. The rebrand, the refresh, the campaign. They are the visible moves that justify a role and build a cv. But brands don't become iconic in two year cycles, right? They become iconic through decades of consistent, protected, evolving identity. And Mike's point, which is great, is that designers, agencies in particular are often the only constant in that journey. Which means guardianship isn't optional, it's a professional responsibility. It's showing up not just to deliver great work, but to protect it from well meaning people who arrive later wanting to leave their mark. The best creative relationships are not transactional, they are curational.
- [04:21]
B
They are so alluring that we convince ourselves that we need them, that we are going to follow them. And I think it's the same for branding, but the easiest way of a one pager that we take clients through and I coach new hires and stuff on, which is branded the Heart, so it says brand at the heart. And we have all of the projects we've worked on and all different types of outputs. That output can be branding, that output can be packaging, it can be experiential, it could be Hendrix Gin, Q Flying cucumber activation or a giant pigeon that we floated down the Hudson river, which we literally did for New York City Football Club. But it doesn't matter. All of these outputs don't matter. They are purely outputs and they're outputs that disrupt.
- [05:05]
A
In an era where brands feel pressured to be everywhere and react to everything, the temptation to chase a moment, a trend, a viral format, cultural flashpoint is constant and completely understandable. But Mike's one pager cuts through all of it with single question. Does this come back to what the brand truly is? Not what's popular, not what a competitor just did, not what the intern saw on TikTok. The brand itself is deceptively simple. Filter, but it's ruthless in practice.
- [05:40]
B
Like we were talking before, we often go to historical societies or libraries and microfiche and we physically build archives. And I keep saying our secret, but the deep secret is not Pinterest, it's actually ebay. So you find stuff on ebay from heritage brands that are sold, because a lot of it is just like bottom of the barrel trade material. Some weird clock that was made in the 70s has some mark on it that doesn't match any of the other marks that they were, you know, I've been using for the last 40 years or old matchbooks or whatever know menus, things that individual restaurants underneath of a chain may have done in the 60s and 70s that are different. So you just have the. It's like the source material is almost never ending. And so we go and dig deep to find those things, the quirks, the difference. And you know, that's the fun stuff, that's the real designer nerd stuff, which influences us a lot. But you also now start to have a full visual archeological timeline of the brand.
- [06:43]
A
Mike shared with me his hidden secrets because we talked about sourcing reference materials and I sent through the conversation that he was not going to tell me his secret weapon, but he did, and that weapon is ebay and that was his best kept secret. It's so specific, it almost sounds like a joke until you really understand what Mike is actually saying. The official brand archive tells you what a company wanted to be. Ebay tells you what actually existed in the world. The matchbooks given away at the bar in 1967, the regional menu that nobody at HQ approved. The promotional clock a distributor made in the 90s that somehow captured the brand spirit better than anything that the design team produced. These are the quirks, the accidents and the unofficial moments where a brand's real character leaked through. And for Mike, that's the most honest starting point there is. Before you design anything new, find out what the brand looked like when nobody was being careful. That's usually where the gold is hiding. I hope you enjoyed these four moments. And if you haven't checked out a full conversation with Mike Perry, I can only encourage you to do so because it's full of incredible moments beyond these four where you can sense that someone is at their best creating work that really matters to them. Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode and I will see you on the next one. If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an ebook and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10% off your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the Code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.