VW’s emotional comeback video might make you a believer.
As the 2026 College Football National Championship approaches, the sport feels as polished and profitable as ever. Bigger broadcasts. Louder hype. Endless analysis. From the outside, college football looks strong—maybe even unstoppable. But beneath the spectacle, something feels unstable.
In a world obsessed with the latest innovations, some products quietly endure, becoming beloved fixtures in our lives. They might not grab headlines, but their legacy is woven into the fabric of everyday life. Let’s shine a spotlight on a few underappreciated modern-day legends that have stood the test of time.
A funny thing happens when brands treat a new logo like the introduction of the first iPhone. Under the studio lights, everything feels momentous. Out in the wild, a logo is just a shape with words—instantly subjected to the unruly physics of public feedback.
There are two reasons why a company's website isn't updated. One, that everything is going wrong. Two, everything is going right. Good news is that the second is true for us.
One my favorite aspects of being a designer is that inspiration can come from anywhere. In fact, it's when you look outside of your medium is when your creativity begins to spark.
The world's most innovative companies have run out of ideas and now just copy one another. Instagram and YouTube are hoping to be TikTok, and it appears that all three platforms are inadvertently recreating television.
Is it just me? It seems like the best stripes from the 1970s and 1980s are making the world more lovely here in the 2020s. Today in the blog, I am showcasing four companies that make irresistible stuff with vintage, on-brand stripes.
We were all there. It was one of the most abrupt paradigm shifts in human history. For almost a century, most people worked in an office building. Then a couple days later, no human on earth worked in an office building.
College graduates, this is the most succinct career advice I can give. The simplest, most powerful way to understand your career is this: you are hired to solve problems. The more complex the problem you solve, the more awesome your career.
When people think of design, we often think of style, maybe glamour. Words like “designer” conjure up images of lifestyle and a prestigious profession. In this blog, I want to go in the opposite direction. These are real stories about how designers themselves have used their talent to create a world that is more human and fraternal.
The concept of "the office" has never been more vague. After 2+ years of working from home, Americans have done "work work" from just about everywhere but the office building itself.
So it's been a pretty serious couple of years, hasn't it? Let's have some fun. Here are some designers having fun and bringing a little bit of magic too! These are fun illusions and playful products that bring delight and mischief into ordinary places.
This is the final blog in my 3-part series on conmen. This series doesn't fit on a company website. But I'm tired of seeing these characters in and around my industry. I want to shine a light on their schemes. We'll all be better for it. You have 10 minutes to save the world, right?
In the last blog, I warned young people about the conmen that float about in trusted circles--in your community, around the university, and even your church. This blog is different. I want to expose younger, savvier conmen who use social media and our modern tools to scam people out of money. You'll never meet these people in real life, but you've already met them online.
This is an open letter to young people. I want to warn you about the conmen you will soon encounter in your professional life. These people are confident, charming, and seem very successful. But they are posers. They will bring you down. They can ruin your dreams.
A great many of people never outgrow the self-doubt that began in high school. It may not show up in that high school topics and interactions, but it's still there throughout adulthood. It's what makes adults vulnerable to political pressure, or to be agreeable to others even when it means abandoning our beliefs.
The hype around technology moves faster than the technology itself. Perhaps your job is doomed, at least the job you have today, but you have time to move along to something new. Maybe something even better?
Our great leaps in humanity never land us softly in Utopia. We land hard, and when we wipe the dust from our eyes, we see new problems that we could’ve never imagined.
Designers of electric vehicles aren’t obligated to round off every corner to reduce drag. Designers can carve vehicles with confidence and audacity. Proof? The ridiculous Cybertruck from Tesla.
This was going to be a blog summarizing what we've been up to since the pandemic upended life as we know it. For anyone keeping score, it's been 14 months and only one blog post to our website. In fact, this is my fifth attempt to write this blog. The other four blogs are still marked as "drafts" here on our website, that holding place for incomplete ideas. Let's instead talk about those...
I would like to suggest that we always write the year "2020" with an asterisk. Every email, every social media post, any reference to this calendar year deserves a big fat asterisk. Go ahead, try it. It feels good to put that asterisk at the end, and offer no explanation: 2020*
We suspended objective judgement of beauty, now we are unable to separate the artists from the con-artists. It was an outrageous 100 years, but it’s over.
Some companies are lucky by having the right mix of letters in their actual name. Of the 26 letters in the English alphabet, some letters are blessed with good genes that make them visually balanced and interesting. Other letters are awkward and less fortunate. Who's ready to nerd-out with me?
Sometimes it’s the little habits that you pick up that can have the biggest impact on your productivity.
Designers can be very pretentious when they talk about their craft. This annoys me, so I am going to be authentic and approachable with this blog. No fancy words or fancy concepts. I genuinely want everyone to understand what it means to have a solid branding system for your company, your non-profit, for your big dream around the corner.
Later in the blog, I want to illustrate a completely unexpected color trend of today, but first let's dispose of this idea that 1) color trends are constant and that 2) color trends are predictable. They are not.
A constant storyline in your life and within our society is figuring out how to reconcile work and life. How can we be successful and live a good life? If getting crazy rich isn't an option, how do we have a good work/life balance? Although there are many answers, I am convinced that most of what we've been told is insufficient. Even worse, it undermines our ability to enjoy life.
Today we are overwhelmed with the written word. Websites! Social media! Emails! Apps! Messaging! I'm going to guess an average adult reads 40,000 words each day. All this flying across multiple screens through each minute of the day. This is unlike anything in human history. Because it is impossible to comprehend such a volume of words, we need a new visual language to enhance what we already have. Emojis allow us to quickly grab attention and communicate emotion in a way that we never could before.
To become legit at anything takes time, passion, and humility. It means caring about something long after everyone around you has lost interest. It may not bring quick fame or fortune, but your gifts have tremendous potential to mend a society and culture that has battered by greed and vanity.
I really didn’t want to write a blog about a Corvette. As a designer, I respect the Corvette’s beginnings, back at the 1950s and 1960s when we were flying into Outer Space and flying down the roads in Space Age cars. But, I came of age in the 1990s, and by then, the Corvette didn’t inspire me at all. They decided to sell it for under $60,000.
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg painted a picture Facebook could become: a place where people could connect online in new and powerful ways. We could stay in touch with friends, and make new friends easier. We arrived at that future, and now we've gone past it.
I have some words of encouragement for ambition souls who are eager to graduate college and start a business. Or for young professionals who want to skip out of their full-time job and create something of your own. Ready? Here it is: YOU HAVE TIME.
Disagreements can be essential to your company’s success. However, disobedience can undermine your team, and ultimately lead to failure. Know the difference between people who disagree, and those who disobey.
There’s a beautiful, productive tension between fundamentals vs trends. This tension informs everything that we do here at smithHOUSE, everyday.
After years of effort decoding jargon and buzzwords, you realize that 90% of it is unnecessary and even meaningless. And anyone who adorns their language with jargon is usually a poser.
We recently launched Version 3 of smithhousedesign.com, and we want to tell you about what we changed and why.
Earlier this year a bizarre news story broke about Hollywood celebrities bribing officials to admit their children into top universities. The most famous name attached to the scandal is Aunt Becky on "Full House," IRL the ever-pretty actress Lori Laughlin. She and her husband Mossimo (1990s fashion icon) apparently paid their child’s way into the University of Southern California.
Inspiration has never been more accessible. With Instagram and Pinterest, we are flooded with inspirational quotes juxtaposed with a selfie or an epic sunset. This trend spilled over into YouTube, where armies of pretty people are ready to inspire and life-coach you to achieve new heights in life. We are in a Golden Age of inspiration. All this inspiration is so lovely, yet so useless.
Today's singular American Tale goes something like this: be bold, step out and be you, and your reward is glory and success. It may be the last awesome, inspiring story that our culture knows how to tell. Tragically, this story is rarely true, and it even neglects what it means to be human.
When I look at the richest stories of the people I know best, and the grand stories of people who I wish I knew, there is an undeniable pattern--their life stories are defined by bold decisions.
I am afraid that in most meetings, even in high-level meetings, people spend too much time posturing themselves to look cool. It’s different than “looking cool” that we all practiced in high school, but the motivation is the same. We want people to like us and think we matter.
We are all familiar with ecosystems. We learned about them when we were young, and most of us remain curious about ecosystems wherever we go. It’s a fascinating way to observe the world around you. It turns out that an ecosystem is a powerful way to see your company, and your long-term competitive strategy.
We all know that “mind reading” doesn’t work. Life is hard enough as it is, so it’s silly to take on the additional burden of having to decipher one another’s emotions and actions to pick up clues on an unspoken tension.
I’m really embarrassed when I stumble into the dysfunctional parts of adulthood. Particularly, dysfunctional teams at companies. I wish there were a better word than “embarrassed,” but it’s the best word I have. It’s a blend of surprise, shame, and disappointment.
It’s easy to blame others for your problems. This is true in your personal life, and in your professional life too. However convenient it is to blame others for you problems in the short term, there are long-term effects that are toxic.
Discussion about the "Millennials at Work" has become an obsession within our culture. This could be casual talk at the coffee shop, or elaborate articles in form respected news outlets. Where ever you go, there is some sort of fact or insight lifted up for all to read, yet it all the talk seems incomplete. So my goal is to end the chatter right now.
Hindsight bias, somehow, seems to be woven deeply into the fabric of many professions. If you expose your financial track record to a financial planner, he'll tell you all the things that you did right and wrong. This has happened for decades.
Ok so I’m writing this blog series about models for predicting the future. Now that I’m here in Part III, I’m fully aware that the series theme of predicting the future is a bit sensational.
Everyone enjoys the hyping up technology. When that tech fails to deliver, we love to dis the tech. What goes up, must come down? Not really. With this model, you chart tech visibility with time, and you begin seeing patterns emerge patterns emerge. Those patterns are mind-blowing.
The topic of the blog today is about hype. Trends. Predictions. If you dare make predictions about the future, you will inevitably find yourself embarrassed by your own predictions. Mostly because predictions are made in the excitement of the present moment, often when we are surrounded by like-minded people.
Avoid unnecessary drama when relaunching your website. Our intuitive, 3-phase approach gives your powerful options to align resources for a successful project.
Which is better platform for building websites? Wordpress or SquareSpace. Understand the pros and cons of each platform and find what's right for you.
SEO has played an outsized role in digital marketing. Is SEO important? Yes. But SEO only solves 10% of your problems. The other 90% is what matters most.
There is a lot of confusion around the subject of Search Engine Optimization, and I hope to help out the Internet by having the audacity of speaking plain language.
Using keywords is obvious. But knowing which keywords are the most valuable to boost your website up Google search results is not obvious. Here's our process.
Maybe. But as soon as someone else comes along wanting to be on Page 1 as well, you have to prove that your website deserves to be ranked higher.
You should start seeing your website move up in the Google search results within a couple of months, and absolutely within 6 months.
Know that there was a time where SEO seemed like some sort of digital voodoo. Do not accept this! You should know what you are paying for and how it SEO works.
There is a lot of confusion around the subject of Search Engine Optimization, and I hope to help out the Internet by having the audacity to speak about a technical subject in plain language.
smithHOUSE is a young Phoenix-based creative agency that focuses on branding, web, and mobile. We enjoy the sweet spot that is in the intersection of design, technology, and business. We have an opening for an entry level Web Designer beginning January 1, 2017. This is a salaried position with benefits.
Technology, society, and business have changed since the 1998 film “You’ve Got Mail” suggested you could find love online. Here are the most ironic details of the film that look ridiculous today.
There is way too much advice online for basic social media strategy. But what does it take to get to AWESOME? Today, I reveal 2 brands who are showing the way.
Great companies collaborate with one another to create something new, useful, + cool. Boost your brand's value, bring in new customers, generate perfect buzz.
Each of our 5 fresh companies recognized changing climates and responded with disruptive strategies. What does this mean for you?
There is a lot of noise out there about digital marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, branding and innovation. You could read 100s of blogs and just as many books, and still feel like you are missing something. This is because you’re reading about methodologies and strategies, but because these aren’t anchored in real-life examples, nothing is really gained.
Give credit to the creative visionaries who have boosted the brand of of Phoenix. Some you know, others you do not. Together, we're reshaping this city.
This blog is about singling out five places that are branding Phoenix that need some love from designers. We have seen things that we love, and we also see things that drive us crazy.
What does it take to have successful career in a new era of marketing? How do you stay relevant in an industry in flux?
Sports teams are some of the most recognizable brands in America. One by one, college and professional teams are rebranding. Pay attention and you'll find inspiration for branding your own team.
Do we vote on principle? Or is there visual science that persuades our votes? A close look at Obama's two campaigns reveal his statistical advantage.
How to find the right website design agency. Understanding the website redesign RFP process. Download a website redesign RFP template too.
You are ready to launch a new website for your company. You've received a website proposal from an agency. What should you look for? Tips and a free download.
Making a new website? Which selection process will bring the write web design agency? A referral? Online research? The website redesign RFP process?
Contrary to social media and news reports, the new logo from Instagram challenges a core ethos of Flat Design.
Chuck Taylors are the most iconic shoe that nobody wears. That’s all about to change.
LinkedIn has become an "essential tool for business," yet we all secretly hate it. Here's why.
Each of these 8 companies had logos that are underwhelming at best. Let’s discuss their ugliness, shall we?
Most of your job will be defined by projects. How well you run those projects will define your career. These 4 concepts will lift your chance of success.
Smith House is a young Phoenix-based creative agency that focuses on branding, web, and mobile. We have internships!
The Apple Watch is here. The wristwatch industry has to rethink itself in a brave new world. Winners. Losers, and what they can do to save themselves.
The iWatch should release the designers: graphic designers, industrial designers, experience designers.
Apple, I See What You Did There. Health isn't just a cool feature within iOS8, it points to Apple's next device--the iWatch.
The iPhone is cool and very capable. But it has created cultural problems that we can do without. Perhaps a new device from Apple can bring back social graces? We need an iWatch.
