World Building 101
+ what we bookmarked this week
Housekeeping
Hello friends. We have a nice roundup for you today. This week, Clayton surveys the best coffee packaging on the internet while Oren dives into the expert playbook for brands using personalities to build on social media.
QUICK NOTE: We are dropping our 2025 Best of Branding Awards next month, where we unpack the best products, retail, collabs, etc. from this year. This is the 3rd year we’re doing this and it’s always a lot of fun to curate what we enjoyed the most.
If you have anything you think should be included in this, leave a comment and state your case!
World Building 101
This week, we’re dropping Episode 3 of our series with Air, where we dive into the nuances of world-building and explain how brands can think about creating extensions of what they do beyond just “product” or seasonal collections.
We chat with our friends at Niwaki in London to discuss how they brought the world of Japanese Gardening to life through curation and proper brand strategy. Then we hang out with Brand Director Flora from Appear Here to discuss how brands can use retail to deliver an on-brand experience, unpacking the costs, strategy, and who does brick-and-mortar well.
Last, we hit the double-decker bus over to Hackney for a visit at Knees Up, a running store and café, to discuss how they’ve built a real community around a physical space.
Our goal with these videos is to create a real-life look at how real brands are building in the real world, and not just online.
How to use your campaign budgets
Love the way House of Errors launched their latest collection with a series of static scenes featuring new production tied to a different action.
It’s simple, but it works. There’s something charming about the low-stakes experimentation of it all, the kind of creativity you can pull off with a few props, a bit of curiosity, and a willingness to throw spaghetti at the wall.
If you’re open to digging through eBay or Craigslist, you can easily pull something like this together for surprisingly little.
It’s a reminder that art direction doesn’t always require big budgets.
But if you’re interested in creating some structure and consistency around the shoots you do, here are a few ideas to consider.
How to factor in consistent shoots:
You can’t build a high-performing content strategy by winging it. Pulling things together ad hoc will eventually break down.
What works is having a clear cadence… a rhythm of prep, shoot, publish, and repeat.
Every shoot is an opportunity to build a library of assets that will fuel content across multiple channels.
The most successful brands treat this as a repeatable process: they prep intentionally, execute efficiently, and extract learnings to improve the next round.
The ideal frequency:
Every two weeks is a solid pace for most teams. It keeps things fresh, responsive, and iterative.
Once a month works better for teams with longer approval timelines or higher production value needs.
The actual cadence will depend on your bandwidth, but consistency matters more than frequency.
Set a budget, and use it wisely
You don’t need a huge budget, but you do need a dedicated one. Even $100 can get you started with props or a location fee. What matters is having a clear allocation tied to each shoot.
Typical budget categories include:
Talent - on-camera or behind-the-scenes support
Props - items that enhance the visual narrative
Gear - equipment rentals or upgrades
Location - renting or securing unique backdrops
Creative - any design, scripting, or editing needs
A tale of two communities
A few weeks ago we talked about KITH Ivy: a new hospitality project that marks the brand’s first members-only club in New York. It’s an ambitious move that makes sense for KITH’s world: refined, exclusive, aspirational.
But on the other side of the Atlantic, Nike and Palace just unveiled something that couldn’t feel more different.
They’ve opened Manor Place, which is a free, six-day-a-week community hub in South London built to celebrate sport, creativity, and culture.
Originally constructed in 1895, the historic venue has been reimagined as a multifunctional playground that fuses Palace’s skate roots with Nike’s sporting legacy. The result is part skatepark, part football arena, part creative studio designed to empower London’s next generation.
Inside, the space splits into three zones: The Park and The Cage (a polished concrete skatepark and underground football court), The Front Room (a gallery and pop-up space for local artists), and The Residency (a studio program offering six emerging creatives free space each year). It’s thoughtful, tangible community-building.
As Palace co-founder Lev Tanju put it:
“At the start we just wanted to create a space for the community – something about skateboarding, sport and hanging out. Nike was the only brand that could help make it happen.”
And that’s the key difference.
KITH’s $36,000 annual membership fee creates belonging through access, a luxury play for those who can afford to buy in. Nike and Palace, on the other hand, are creating belonging through participation. This is an open invitation for anyone to show up, create, and play.
In a world where “community” often means paywall, Manor Place feels like a return to what the word should mean: something built for everyone.
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