The Pocket Universal Principles of Branding 100 Key Concepts for Defining, Building, and Delivering Brands

by Kingsley, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780760393826
• ISBN10: 0760393826
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780760393833
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-06-03
• Publisher: Rockport Publishers
• More Book Details

Summary

This pocket-size version of Universal Principles of Branding presents 100 concepts, theories, and guidelines that are critical for understanding brands and branding in a handy, condensed take-along format.

*Winner of the 2023 American Graphic Design Award for Book Design from Graphic Design USA*

Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this comprehensive reference pairs clear one-page explanations of each principle with visual examples of it applied in practice on the facing page. By considering these concepts and examples, you can learn to make more informed, and ultimately better, branding decisions.

Featured principles are as diverse as:

• Authenticity
• Social Responsibility
• World Building
• Gatekeepers
• Rituals and routine

Each principle is presented in a two-page format. The left-hand page contains a succinct definition, a full description of the principle, examples of its use, and guidelines for use. Sidenotes appear to the right of the text, and provide elaborations and references. The right-hand page contains visual examples and related graphics to support a deeper understanding of the principle.

The titles in the Rockport Universal series offer comprehensive and authoritative information and edifying and inspiring visual examples on multidisciplinary subjects for designers, architects, engineers, students, and anyone who is interested in expanding and enriching their design knowledge.

Author Biography

Mark Kingsley is a creative director and strategist with a wide range of experience and recognition. He is a faculty member in the School of Visual Arts Masters in Branding program and currently holds the endowed Melbert B. Cary Professorship in Graphic Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology. As Executive Strategy Director at Collins, he developed the new global positioning for Ogilvy and helped Equinox enter the luxury hotel business. For over 17 years, his studio Greenberg Kingsley specialized in music and arts, including several years of branding and advertising for Central Park SummerStage; work for the Guggenheim Museum store; and music packaging for John Coltrane, Pat Metheny, and Quincy Jones. His current studio, Malcontent, serves global advertising firms, fin-tech startups, arts organizations, living legends, and Pulitzer Prize winners.

Table of Contents

1. Abstraction

2. Anthropology / Ethnography
3. Association
4. Authenticity
5. Bandits and robots
6. Beauty, not beautification
7. The Big Five 
8. Black box or scientific method
9. Blurring 
10. Body of work
11. Brand architecture
12. Brands are a technology
13. Branded Unconscious
14. Campaigns
15. Case studies
16. Celebrities
17. Character 
18. Comfort
19. Commit to the bit
20. Conflict
21. Context
22. Crafty creativity
23. Customer journey
24. Delivery
25. Difference and Différance
26. Digital to social strategist
27. Disaggregated data 
28. Do no harm
29. Don’t fear the audit
30. Ecosystem
31. Engagement
32. Environment/Anti-environment
33. Erotics of brands
34. Everybody lives in a body
35. Everyone works in branding
36. Flexing
37. Frameworks
38. Framing
39. Gathering (and dividing)
40. Generosity (and humility)
41. Go outside your lane
42. Haptics
43. Hearing voices
44. History and genealogy
45. Heterogeneity
46. How you say it
47. Identity 
48. Influencers are a racket
49. Intimacy
50. Jargon (and fear)
51. Jungian-ish archetypes 
52. Kill the Human
53. Let's put on a show
54. Magic and superstition
55. Management 
56. The Master Narrative Problem
57. Mystery is sexy
58. Naming is knowing
59. No such place as “away”
60. Nostalgia
61. Observation
62. One ______ fallacy
63. Out of Home, but in the Mind
64. Parody is a sign of success
65. Party people
66. Permission
67. Playtime
68. Politics
69. Professionalism second
70. Relationships
71. Render unto Caesar
72. Repair and age
73. Repetition and syncopation
74. Retinal / non-retinal
75. Rituals and routine
76. Scoping 
77. Semantic infiltration 
78. Signals
79. Skepticism
80. Social Responsibility
81. Standards 
82. Strategy
83. Tag, you’re it
84. Take me home
85. Talk to the gatekeepers
86. Taste the rainbow
87. Tension
88. Thinking over wisdom
89. Time 
90. Touchpoints
91. Values
92. Valuation
93. Viruses and variants
94. War Language
95. Weakest link
96. What if your logo was a drum pattern?
97. What is the product?
98. World-building
99. You are not a brand
100. Zany, cute and informative