Crafting Emotion in 2025

What does “craft” mean for branding in 2025? Is it perfectly set type, pixel‑perfect layouts and regimented systems that blanket the shelf and the high street? Or is it something harder to quantify - the way a brand makes you feel, remember and care?

At International Assembly Festival 2025 in Glasgow, a clear thread emerged: emotional connection is the new craft. Precision still matters, but the work that cuts through is made with care, intent and a distinctly human point of view, especially as machine‑made outputs become easier to generate and harder to differentiate. As a global branding agency, we see this daily: scale is nothing without feeling.

Human intent in a machine age

Speakers across design, code and motion returned to the same point: tools can accelerate production, but they can’t supply point of view. In code‑driven creative, AI can scaffold possibilities; only a human decides which imperfections to keep, what to emphasise and where meaning lives. Brand research and audience profiling, backed by consumer interviews and stakeholder interviews, help us understand which choices will genuinely resonate. The emotional tenor of a brand still comes from human judgement.

Story over surfaces 

The most resonant work wasn’t about “perfect” formal qualities at all. It was about life’s small, observed moments - the ones we all recognise but rarely articulate. Outside our design bubble, no one falls in love with the radius of a corner. People connect when they see themselves reflected back: their wit, their messiness, their hopes. That’s the material we translate into visual identity design and brand communications, so the story holds across channels.

Wit, not just humour 

One theme we loved was the idea of wit in design - not punchlines, but the knowing wink that signals there’s a person behind the work. It’s the subtle decision that makes something feel alive. A demonstration of historical letterforms showed how a flawless imitation can still feel wrong if it sands away the quirks that carry a writer’s personality. In other words: accuracy without attitude isn’t craft, it’s pastiche. This is where motion guidelines matter: timing, pace and restraint ensure brand animations carry meaning, not just movement.

The value of imperfection 

A recent café identity with a wordmark drawn by the owner’s six‑year‑old captured this beautifully. By many conventional measures, it’s “wrong”. But you can’t miss the messy joy of a child writing their name for the first time. It feels human. It sticks. That’s the point. Good brand guidelines protect that feeling - documenting the line quality, the voice and the moments where the brand should breathe - so the quirk survives success.

AI isn’t the villain - unthinking use is 

It’s tempting to blame AI for sameness, but homogenous brands long predate machine tools. Designers shape how these tools are used. Use automation to make work safer and flatter, and you’ll get more of the same. Use it to explore, prototype and challenge - then apply a rigorous brand audit and edit cycle - and you have a chance to break the pattern.

Order is overrated (sometimes) 

Life is rarely ordered; brands that acknowledge a little chaos can feel more honest. Not every system needs to be looser, but where the story calls for it, lean into warmth, texture and the right kind of friction. Brand architecture and brand portfolio architecture can hold space for surprise without losing clarity. The goal isn’t a perfect brand - it’s a persuasive, memorable one.

What this means for global brands

• Lead with a point of view: your brand strategy should decide, not the tool.
• Design for feeling: brief visual identity design and digital brand design from the emotion you want to create.
• Research with purpose: combine qualitative brand research, like consumer and stakeholder interviews, with pulse testing and customer segmentation insights to prioritise what matters.
• Keep the quirks: identify the human edges your audience will remember; codify them in clear, useful brand guidelines.
• Measure resonance, not just recall: track the cues that spark affinity over time, not only awareness.
  
  

How Taxi Studio applies this in practice

• Start with feeling, not features: We run focused brand workshops to define the emotional territory your brand should own - what people should feel before, during and after encountering you.
• Translate emotion into assets: We map those feelings to voice, narrative, identity, motion and sound - so “warm” or “confident” become specific choices in type, rhythm and behaviour.
• Prototype wide, edit hard: We use rapid exploration to open options, then narrow through a structured brand audit. AI helps us explore; human intent makes the final call.
• Codify the edges: We create practical brand guidelines and motion guidelines that protect the wit, texture and timing that make you unforgettable.
• Build systems that flex: From brand architecture to portfolio architecture, we design toolkits for campaigns, product, retail and digital so the core feeling stays intact.
• Carry it inside: Internal branding ensures the organisation expresses the same feeling in service, sales and hiring - because culture is part of the experience.
• Where research sharpens emotion: Not all insights are equal.
• Audience profiling, persona mapping and customer segmentation insights are most useful when they illuminate moments that move people, not just demographics. We blend qualitative depth with lightweight quant to confirm direction without sanding off the edges.
  
  

Why this matters now
In an era of infinite outputs, attention goes to what feels made by someone, for someone. Brands that lead with point of view, design for feeling and keep their human edges will outlast the noise.

If you’re looking for a global branding agency to shape a more resonant brand - whether it’s a refresh, a launch or a campaign - let’s talk. Taxi Studio works worldwide from Bristol, helping organisations align brand strategy, brand research and design craft across visual identity design, digital brand design, brand communications and motion.