Belief Number Nine is about our duty to be responsible citizens of our city by supporting connections between people and working with the community to improve the conditions of where we live.

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Today we discuss #8 on our Statement of Beliefs--a pillar that guides every interaction with our clients, partners and colleagues.

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Today we discuss the 5th Matchstic Belief in our series of 10 and what they mean to us as a team.

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Every great brand needs to stop and take time to work on the business, not just for the business. Here's a peak into a Matchstic work day the team had last week, and what a similar day can do for your business.

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Today marks the beginning of the 10th Matchstic retreat. Twice a year we pack up and take our team up to the mountains to spend a few days talking about how to get better.

If I had to define the best decision we ever made, the first would obviously be the people we have, but second would be the discipline to take retreats.  It's our time to take the company apart and put it back together again.

Without a doubt we have always made the most advances as a company during this time.  When we're in the normal flow of work, it's nearly impossible to back away and look at it all with an objective eye.

We never know exactly what we're going to take away from it, but that's part of the beauty.  Lock up a group of smart, innovative, and fun people for a few days and just get out of the way and let the magic happen.

Do you have any advice for us or things for us to consider during this time?  If so, please comment on this blog and we'll use it as a part of our process.

Thanks!

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This week we wrapped up the 2nd edition of Brand Camp with five remarkable companies.

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Many of you may not know this, but Matchstic has an office chaplain, Scott Armstrong.  Scott (far right in the photo) is the founder and head pastor of City Church Eastside, who you have seen in our work section as well as it being the case study chosen to be in Alina Wheeler‘s 3rd Edition of Designing Brand Identity.

Scott always comes to the beginning of our retreat and will spend some time sharing a message with us.  We're very blessed to have him as a part of our culture, and I thought I would share with you some of what Scott challenged us with last week.  Scott based his talk off of Jesus most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount.  Here is the text from Matthew 5:13-16.

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

Scott explained how Jesus' charge to be salt and light also applies to Matchstic and our role in affecting culture.  In Jesus' time, salt existed to hinder the decay of meat.  Likewise, we are called, through branding and smart design systems, to assist in slowing the decay that may exist in a company or brand.  The light's job takes it one step further, to reverse the decay and create life.  Again, brand strategies and design systems should create life within an organizational culture.  We always have to keep that perspective.  We're not decorating a company, we're helping to ignite a flame.  Salt and light.  Stop the decay and bring hope and life to all we work with.

Scott, we're so grateful for your heart and your service to the Matchstic culture.  God Bless.

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Today marks the beginning of our 8th Matchstic retreat.  We will spend the next 3 days taking apart our company and putting it back together again.  One of the ways we commemorate our retreats is by releasing a new Matchstic t-shirt for everyone.  So above you'll see our newest shirt arrival.  I call it the Flag Shirt.

The reason I call it the Flag Shirt is that it was inspired from the flag you see to the left of it.  On our last retreat we flushed out our three core values.  At the time I was studying a lot of country flags and love their direct relationship to a brand identity.  I wanted to develop something that represented our values without just stating them directly.  So I approached Alvin about this idea of a flag that represented our three core values.  Later he put together this shirt to represent the flag.  Here is a brief description of our three core values and which color bar of the flag represents that value.

Blue | Harmony. Great relationships are the cornerstone of great work. Great relationships internally. Great relationships with clients. Great relationships with partners & vendors. Great relationships with our community. When there is no dissonance, but pure harmony, then and only then does pure beauty soar. Great work always starts with Harmony.  The sky blue color is a great representation of Harmony.

White | Truth. We are in a constant pursuit of truth. We are not manipulative marketers. We are seekers of truth. We dig for gold and bring it to the surface, clean out all the dirt, and hold it tall for all to see. Truth is excellence. Truth is what’s right, not what one wants. Truth is sought after with unmatched urgency. Truth is always black and white, hence the white bar of the flag.

Red | Courage. Excellence comes at a risk. Risk of humiliation. Risk of failure. In order to risk, one must have Courage. Courage to act in accordance with beliefs, in spite of criticism. We must also encourage our clients to take the risks they need to take in order to accomplish their dreams. Courage is not easy, but it is a vital component of building a brand and working at Matchstic.  Red represents that courage.

Thanks again to our friends at Zoink! for yet another amazing print job printing our shirts. You all are the best.

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Blake blogged the other day about the honor of Matchstic being featured in Alina Wheeler's third edition of Designing Brand Identity.  If you haven't picked up your copy yet, do it now.  You won't regret it.

I asked Alina if she wouldn't mind doing an interview with us to give us a little more background on her and her history with developing Brand Identities.  So, without further ado, here's Alina…

CRAIG: How did you get into the business of branding?

ALINA: Every since I was a young child, I have been fascinated by issues of identity and identification. I did not speak English until I was 6. Being bilingual as a child made me sensitive to the nuances of meaning and culture. In the second grade at the Sacred Heart of Jesus school, we color-coded line drawings of our souls according to the amount and type of our sinning (imagine!). I am convinced that at that moment my fascination with brand architecture began. In addition, being the daughter of a sea captain, I developed a love of lore and storytelling.

During the 70s and 80s, I was the managing partner of a large strategic design consultancy named Katz Wheeler. We always worked closely with the CEO and senior management team to create identity systems that were aligned with business strategy and expressed a competitive advantage. We worked for a diverse range of clients in the private and public sector.

CRAIG: Why did you originally write "Designing Brand Identity"?

ALINA: I wanted to reinvent the marketing textbook, demystify branding, demonstrate the relationship between strategy and design, and illuminate best practices and tools. While there are a lot of brilliant books on brand strategy and inspiring books on the best trademark design, there were no books about process and the fundamentals. I believe that adhering to the process insures remarkable results. I also wanted an easy to use reference guide–that is why each subject is covered on a single spread.

CRAIG: When was the 1st edition published?

ALINA: The first edition was published in 2003.

CRAIG: Who was the book written for?

ALINA: The book was written for the whole branding team: from the CEO to anyone who has the responsibility to build the brand and express the brand in order to attract new customers, increase customer loyalty and build brand equity.

CRAIG: One thing I love about this book is that it's an amazing collaboration of insight and work from leaders all around our industry.  What type of challenges come with such a collaborative effort?

ALINA: We all benefit from sharing best practices and upholding the highest standards in our industry. I am fortunate that so many smart people, companies and firms want to be in this book.

CRAIG: What is the most undervalued part of the brand building process?

ALINA: The process itself. Very few people understand that the process is the same regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur like Jeff Bezos starting Amazon in his garage or a global corporation with 100,000 employees. Also, I am consistently amazed that more people don't use a brand brief as a tool to achieve agreement about what the brand stands for.

CRAIG: Some swear by recent trends, some stay true to timeless philosophies.  What is your take on the relationship between those two?

ALINA: Regardless of whether you are branding in Shanghai or on Facebook, the fundamentals remain the same. ..Who are you?, who needs to know?, how will they find out? and why should they care? Thus said, I am intrigued by the yin yang diagram that Jim Collins uses—his premise is not choosing one over the other–rather it's both and they are inseparable.

CRAIG: What are the most important characteristics of a great branding firm?

ALINA: First and foremost, strategic imagination, which is the ability to align business acumen with creative strategy and expression. Design excellence which is the ability to reduce a complex, meaningful idea to its visual essence, whether the endpoint is a symbol, a new brand architecture, a look and feel, or an integrated brand identity system. Empathy and insight: an ability to be collaborative and understand the perspectives of all stakeholders, suspend judgment and transcend politics.

We're privileged to have Alina join us again on our bi-annual retreat in a few weeks. If any of you have any specific questions for Alina, leave a comment here or email me (craig@matchstic.com) and I'll try and get the answer for you in a few weeks.

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We get alot of questions about our biannual retreats, What do you guys do? Is it really worth it? What do you talk about?

Well, This year we spent the first day in an in-office all day session with talks from Alina Wheeler, Scott Armstrong, and Jim Doggett with Avalaunch. After that we traveled to Maggie Valley, NC for two days in the mountains. Some of the session titles included "Design, Form, and Choas" a look at work by Paul Rand, Values Discovery Session, The Road to Innovation, Creativity is NOT Chapstick, and Our Brand Essence Fire Drill.

The rest is all captured in the video. Enjoy!

Matchstic Spring Retreat 2009 from matchstic on Vimeo.

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