Someone commented on one of my videos that worldbuilding is just the fancy word for branding and I get why people think that. They sound like they’re circling the same idea but they’re not doing the same job, and once you see the difference you can’t help but distinguish it in every brand you interact with.
Branding is what something looks like: a font, a color palette, a logo, the way you photograph product, a consistent visual language you pick once and repeat forever. It’s a decision! You make it in a Notion doc or a brand deck, you hand it to your designer, and from then on it’s mostly maintenance.
Worldbuilding is bigger than that, and it took me a while to find language for it that felt right. It’s not just the why behind the branding, though that’s part of it. It’s the thing that takes you out of your actual day and gives you somewhere to belong that isn’t just your life. It can be aspirational, it can be nostalgic, but it has to make you feel something, and a font cannot do that on its own!! A world is a place you want to be, even for thirty seconds while you’re scrolling or opening an email. Branding gets recognized, while worldbuilding gets felt deeply.
An email to prove it
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