Jacob Cass | Branding & Design

You don’t need another course. You need mentors. You need guidance. You need feedback. That’s why we created the Brand Builders Alliance™… The ultimate membership for brand builders, providing support, guidance and resources to master branding & build a thriving creative business! We have 7 world-class resident coaches inside, ready to guide you on your journey: Sarah Robb @brandstrategysarah Matt Davies @mrmattdavies Yevgeniya Davarashvili @one6creative Steve Guberman @mrgube Peter Wilken @dolphinbrandman Rachel Davis @shehacksbrands and myself of course. 🚀 Our doors reopen next week for those on the waitlist! Visit To get on the waitlist. #businessofdesign #brandstrategy #branding

Building a creative business is tough—but you don’t have to do it alone. From mastering branding to attracting the right clients and creating sustainable income, The Brand Builders Alliance™ gives you the support, guidance, and resources to grow with confidence. 💡 Ready to level up? Comment “ALLY” to get on the waitlist! #branding #community

🏙 How do you build a skyscraper? What direction do you build? Up? Nope. You dig down first. Create a solid foundation. Then build up. The same goes for brand building. Start with your brand’s foundation. 1. DEFINE YOUR PURPOSE Why you do what you do 2. DEFINE YOUR VISION What you want to achieve 3. DEFINE YOUR MISSION How you’re going to do it 4. DEFINE YOUR VALUES
What you believe in. This is your brand’s foundation (core, heart, essence & DNA) and will the base on which your empire will grow. What’s your why? This post was originally created for @thechrisdo ’s profile and has been republished with permission. ➡️ Sign up to the JUST Creative Insider to get instant access to an ever-expanding toolbox of branding & design resources. Visit brandingbriefcase.com . . . . . #branding #brandingtips #graphicdesign #startwithwhy #simonsinek #futurwolfpack

Is this the most honest creative agency pricing menu on the internet? 😂 Welcome to Make It Pop Studio™ Featuring: • Bigger Logo Adjustment™ • Inspirational Carousel Pack • Can We See More Options? • AI Generated Brand Voice • My Wife Preferred Option 2 And yes… “Make It Pop™” is still only $75/revision. Which item gave you creative PTSD? 👀 Tag a designer, strategist, marketer, or client who has definitely ordered from this menu before. #Branding #graphicdesignhumor #GraphicDesign #BrandStrategy #graphicdesignhumour

👀 This is a trend I can get behind... Seeing the HUMANS behind the work. Here’s my (re)submission for the Logo Archive spearheaded by Rich Baird, removing the logo for San Francisco that featured type. I’ve chosen these client logo marks from the literal thousands I’ve designed over the years because they reflect one of my favourite approaches to logo design: Simple marks with layered meaning. Each one combines multiple ideas into a clear, memorable symbol: TULIP ✚🌷 Health cross + tulips Better Tires 🛞🙂 Tire + smile The Eye Center 👁️❤️ Eye + centered heart (To go along with their tag, Where vision meets heart™) Waves to Wilderness 🌊⛰️ Wave + mountains Personal J mark 🔺✍️ Signature J + low poly triangles EnviroStar 🍃⭐ Leaves + star Bauger Construction 🅱️📏 B + measuring tape Island Smiles 🦷🌴 Tooth + palm tree AltaWing 🅰️🪽 A + bird with wings spread Tooth Care ❤️🦷 Heart + tooth For me, the best logo marks are not just attractive. They compress meaning & give people something to discover. And when done well, they make a brand easier to remember, easier to recognise, and harder to ignore! Aka they Stand The Flock Out! 🦩 Big kudos to Rich for starting this archive and putting the humans behind the marks back into the spotlight. What’s your fav from the bunch? #LogoDesign #BrandIdentity #Branding #GraphicDesign #LogoArchive @logoarchive.now @logoarchive

Founder branding is no longer optional. In this episode of JUST Branding, we sit down with Amelia Sordell @ameliasordell , founder and CEO of Klowt, and one of the leading voices in founder-led marketing. We unpack why trust is increasingly built through people, not just company brands, and how founders can turn their expertise into visibility, authority, and commercial growth. We cover: • What founder branding actually means • Why personal brand has become a serious commercial lever • The difference between founder brand and company brand • The biggest mistakes CEOs make online • How to build visibility without looking performative • What separates real thought leadership from vanity content • How busy founders can stay consistent • How to measure the ROI of founder branding If you’re a founder, CEO, strategist, marketer, or creative entrepreneur, this one is worth a listen. Because people don’t just buy from brands. They buy from people they trust. 🎧 Listen to the full episode via JUST Branding Podcast. #FounderBranding #PersonalBranding #FounderLedMarketing #BrandStrategy #ThoughtLeadership LinkedInMarketing Entrepreneurship BrandBuilding JUSTBranding Klowt

Selection of logos for the @logoarchive run by @designerrichardbaird All for this! Clients include city of San Francisco (via Miles Partnership), The Eye Center, Better Tires, My personal brand mark, EnviroStar, RetireMeant for Life, Ruff Club, Bauger and Tooth Care. #logodesign #logodesignarchive #logoinspiration

It’s official. Brand Builders Summit (@brandbuilderssummit )is back for 2026. This is the first time I’m sharing it publicly, and I’m excited to start shaping this year’s speaker lineup. Across the past two summits, we’ve welcomed 25,000+ brand builders from around the world, with sessions spanning brand strategy, identity design, marketing, business, AI, pricing, positioning, and creative growth. For 2026, we’re building an even more elevated experience! Brand Builders Summit 2026 will be a free 4-day virtual event for ambitious designers, strategists, marketers, and creative entrepreneurs who want to become better brand builders and climb higher in their creative careers. We’re looking for speakers with a strong point of view and practical expertise across branding, including: Brand strategy Design (including logos, identity, web, and print) Marketing and business If you have something valuable to teach the next generation of brand builders, I’d love to hear from you. Fill in this application form. Comment ‘speaker’ The summit takes place September 8–11, 2026 and will feature 30+ global speakers. Add it to your calendar now so you don’t miss the ascent. Hope to see your name in the mix! And yes, if you applied last year, please apply again so we have your most up to date topic and details. Let’s help more brand builders ascend to mastery.

Most brand builders obsess over positioning, messaging, and visual identity. But here’s the uncomfortable truth 👉 Your brand is experienced in the product. If the User Experience is clunky… If the journey is confusing… If users can’t do what they came to do… Your brand isn’t working. It’s broken. In our latest episode of the JUST Branding Podcast, Myself and co-host Jacob Cass 🦩 sat down with the wonderful Lex Lofthouse (Or as I know her "Lofty" 😎) - someone I actually worked with 10 years ago — to unpack where brand meets the disipline of 'UX'. We get into the good stuff of: 💪 Why beautiful brands fail in the product 💪 What UI and UX are and how to use them to grow 💪 Where brand strategy actually shows up in UX 💪 The biggest mistakes brand teams make 💪 And how small UX decisions shape big brand perceptions One of my favourite takeaways: You can design something you think is perfect… and users will still find a way to break it. That’s not failure. That’s reality. So what are you doing about it? That's exactly why UX matters to brand builders. If you care about building brands that actually work and deliver value to customers - not just look good - this one’s worth your time. 🎧 Listen on all major Podcast platforms (apple, spotify etc). Search of Just Branding. See you in your earbuds. #branding #ux #design #brandbuilding #strategy #podcast

Claude Design just dropped. ChatGPT Images 2.0 too. And right on cue, every hype bro is declaring: “Graphic designers are cooked.” I don’t fully buy it. Yes, AI can generate visuals. Yes, it can speed up prototyping. Yes, it can make average work look polished. And yes, it has raised the floor. But clients don’t just need graphics. They need taste. Judgement. Context. Commercial thinking. They need someone who can spot what fits, what feels off, what aligns, what distracts, what earns trust, and what might quietly damage the brand. AI can create visuals. But it can’t own the brand. It can’t carry the reputation. It can’t sit in the messy middle between business goals, customer perception, creative direction, and market reality. That’s where the opportunity is. The opportunity now isn’t about becoming a faster pair of hands. It’s about becoming a strategic partner. Someone who can connect design decisions to business logic, ask better questions, build systems instead of isolated assets, package thinking around outcomes, and earn trust through taste, craft, and judgement. That’s what I help creatives inside Brand Builders Alliance™ @brandbuildersalliance move toward: From creative executor to trusted brand builder. I spoke about this recently with James Martin and Matt Davies ⚡️ on the JUST Branding Podcast in our episode, “Why Most Designers Won’t Last.” Despite the punchy title, it was an honest, hopeful, and surprisingly light-hearted conversation about how designers can evolve in this changing landscape. So, your thoughts? Are designers cooked? Or are we just being forced to become more human? Keep designing, humans.

A lot is happening inside Brand Builders Alliance™ right now. @brandbuildersalliance We’ve got an incredible lineup of masterclasses coming up from our resident mentors and guest experts, and I’m seriously grateful to have such generous people sharing their knowledge inside the community. True allies!! Inside BBA, members get access to: • Pricing Your Creative Work with Shannon Mattern • Productizing Your Service with Jason Gracia • Positioning That Powers Profit for Creatives with Matt Clutterham 🧩 • Brand Strategy Masterclass with Gigi • Monthly Mindset Coaching with Jenny Jarvis • Web Strategy Masterclass with Gigi • Monthly Business Coaching with me All included in the membership. All happening throughout the year. Huge thanks to our coaches and guest experts for making this community stronger. Want access? DM me “BBA”.

In this episode of JUST Branding, we got into the stuff that actually lasts: reputation, craft, taste, care, and why hype without substance falls apart fast. A few standout ideas from the conversation with James Martin aka @made.by.james and my bearded co-host @mrmattdavies . Your reputation is not built by what you say about yourself. It is built by what people say when you are not in the room. Craft still matters. Taste still matters. And if you want your work to compound, you need to stay in the game long enough for it to do so. We also got into AI, DIY branding, shortcuts, wonky shelves, and why doing the quick fix now can create bigger problems later. Plenty of truth bombs. Plenty of laughs. Very James. Which quote hit you hardest? Tune in on YouTube & all major pods. Search JUST Branding. #JUSTBranding #BrandStrategy #Branding #DesignBusiness #CreativeBusiness PersonalBrand Reputation BrandDesign LogoDesign CreativeCareers JamesMartin MadeByJames