Barbour Design Inc.

Beginning August 1, 2026, NCAA Division I uniforms will start featuring corporate sponsors.

Schools can now add up to two commercial patch logos to their uniforms. The Big 12 has already signed a deal with Monster Energy, and Kansas is putting Ripple’s XRP logo on all varsity sports gear.

At first glance, this seems like an easy way to support athlete revenue sharing and cover growing athletic department expenses. But uniform patches are more than just advertising; they create strong brand connections.

When a school sells space on its jerseys, it connects its tradition and reputation directly to a corporate partner. With individual athlete NIL deals also in play, there is a real risk of brand conflicts.

Does selling patch space help programs stay competitive, or does it weaken the tradition of college sports brands?

They turned the entire roller coaster train around so we could ride it backward!

Before the internet made finding your subculture easy, I joined the American Coaster Enthusiasts. We got insider access, newsletters, and exclusive ride times.

The track didn’t change. The coaster didn’t change. But riding it backward before the gates opened made us feel seen.

Access isn’t just a perk. It’s what turns passive attention into a real community.

When you give your biggest supporters an experience made just for them, you’re not just giving them a better seat. You’re giving them a reason to stay for good.

What’s a niche community that made you feel like you finally found your people?

It’s 4 PM. The deck is due at 5 PM. Someone on your team is building the last six slides alone, with no design team available and no time to open a 60-page PDF guide.

In that hour, they aren’t just following the brand. They are either living it or missing it.

Most brand guides are written like grammar books. They record rules for calm, perfect moments. But real audiences experience your brand in a rush… during the last-minute pitch slide, the quick social graphic, or the improvised client handout.

There is a big difference between compliance and fluency.

Compliance means giving someone a rulebook and checking if they followed it.
Fluency is about teaching the reasons behind every choice so the team can improvise without losing the brand’s soul.

Thick brand guidelines don’t create consistency under pressure. Shared instincts do.

Brand fluency breakdown in the latest newsletter. Link in bio.

Ever catch yourself planning your next vacation while you’re still on one? 🏖️

I used to think this constant anticipation was just restlessness. But lately, I’m realizing that the present often borrows its energy from what’s next. Having something on the horizon isn’t a flaw, it’s momentum.

And in marketing (and life), once you give people what you promised them... what reason are you giving them to look forward to tomorrow?

Drop a 🙋‍♂️ in the comments if you’re guilty of planning your next meal mid-bite.

Your live presentation is doing work your design should be doing.

When you’re in the room, your voice can rescue a shaky layout, add missing context, and guide the eye. But what happens when the meeting ends, and the deck gets forwarded to someone who wasn’t there?

That’s where the second audience comes in.

They’re reading your proposal between calls, skipping straight to slide 4, and making real decisions based purely on your hierarchy, typography, and white space. No voice. No explanation. Just the composition on the page.

If your layout only works when you’re there to narrate it, it isn’t finished yet.

Second audience breakdown in the latest newsletter. Link in bio.

British Airways and Norwegian Air made a bet on the World Cup quarterfinal: lose, and your Instagram logo becomes your rival’s for a day.

England beat Norway 2–1. Norwegian paid up.

The swap reportedly reached tens of millions of people. Neither airline holds official FIFA rights, that belongs to Qatar Airways and American Airlines. So the real question isn’t whether it was funny. It’s whether audiences saw harmless banter or read it as a tournament connection that wasn’t actually there.

Would you let your brand make this bet? Swipe through 👉

Ever tried one of those fully digital restaurants? Walk in, scan, order, pay. No small talk, no friction. Honestly, I don’t mind that part.

But when my meal arrived, it was served on cheap, single-use plastic. The kind that outlives the meal by a few hundred years.

It made me realize that when you build a business model entirely around removing friction, someone has to decide which friction is worth removing. They chose to cut out the waiting, but they also decided that what gets left behind afterward wasn’t worth thinking about.

Nobody sets out to build something wasteful. It just ends up that way when speed is the only thing you optimize for.

If you stripped away the friction from your customer or partner experience tomorrow, how sure are you that you know which part was the inconvenience, which part was the reason they stayed, and what you quietly left behind just to get there faster?