The Law of Brand Evolution

How copyright, trademark, and culture force brands to evolve, and why disciplined brand architecture is the essential act of self-preservation.

 

The Expiration

Every great mark carries a timer. Copyrights end. Trademarks must be used, renewed, and defended. In today’s remix economy, fan edits, memes, AI-generated art, and parody, control isn’t binary; it’s a discipline. The brands that endure treat legal reality not as a constraint, but as a creative operating system. They evolve on purpose, on cadence, and in public.

A brand, at its core, is a system:

• A belief structure (mission, vision, values)
• An identity (visuals, voice, experience)
• A culture (people, behavior, governance)
• And a set of outcomes (equity, preference, loyalty, performance)

When law and culture shift, the system adapts. A strong brand doesn’t just express, it endures, because it’s designed to evolve.

 

Copyright vs. Trademark: The Countdown of Creativity

Copyright protects creative works, but only for a limited time - 95 years in the United States. Trademark protects identifiers, logos, characters, slogans, for as long as they’re actively used and defended. Every January, a new class of cultural icons quietly crosses the threshold into public domain. In recent years, that list has become more cinematic over the past few years, including The Jazz Singer, The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby, and the cornerstone of the Disney empire, Steamboat Willie. Once only limited to literary works, the expiration now includes the early visual and narrative DNA of Hollywood itself. By the mid-2030s, even Snow White, Bambi, and Batman will be up for grabs. For studios that built their empires on IP, 95 years suddenly feels brief. When Disney’s Steamboat Willie entered the public domain in 2024, the earliest version of Mickey Mouse became fair game for public use. But Disney was ready. Since 2007, the studio’s animated logo has featured that same black-and-white Mickey, transforming him into a trademarked identifier. It’s a kind of legal choreography: turning expiring IP into living identity. Disney didn’t merely preserve Mickey, it proved that a brand, when continually reimagined, becomes its own form of copyright.

 

The Public Domain Era of Hollywood

The modern entertainment industry is entering a copyright reckoning, as nearly a century of protected stories begins to slip into public hands. Hollywood executives who once fought for longer copyright terms, through what critics dubbed the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” of 1998, now face a new reality: there will be no more extensions. The internet changed the politics of ownership. Platforms like YouTube and Google have built empires by monetizing shared culture, while voters increasingly see open access as a public good. For brands, that means protection is no longer legislative. It’s architectural. The future belongs to those who evolve their assets faster than they expire.

 

Case Studies

Disney: Turning Expiration into Evolution

Disney’s strength lies in its ability to treat every iteration of Mickey Mouse as both creative renewal and legal reset. From the hand-drawn 1920s version to modern CGI, each Mickey is visually distinct, culturally current, and legally defensible. The company also drew on an earlier precedent. In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs pioneered what IP lawyers call “double-wrapping,” protecting creative works under both copyright and trademark, when he locked down both the story and name of Tarzan of the Apes. Though Tarzan is now out of copyright, the name and likeness remain licensed trademarks, discouraging unauthorized use. Disney perfected the model: a character as both narrative property and logo. This isn’t just nostalgia, it’s architecture. By continuously updating its assets, Disney reinforces ownership and extends equity across new mediums. The studio’s ecosystem including film, TV, parks, streaming, and merchandise is a Branded House in perpetual motion. When creativity meets compliance, evolution becomes a form of governance.

 

McDonald’s: Embracing the Parody, Owning the Narrative

When McDonald’s flipped its golden arches upside down in 2024, it wasn’t just a clever stunt. The “WcDonald’s” campaign paid homage to decades of anime and manga that spoofed the brand as “WcDonalds” or “WacDonalds” to dodge trademark law. Instead of fighting the parody, McDonald’s joined it. Partnering with Japanese manga artist Acky Bright and the legendary Studio Pierrot (Naruto), the company launched limited-edition packaging, anime shorts, and digital manga under the WcDonald’s name. The move was more than cultural, it was strategic. By officially sanctioning its own bootleg, McDonald’s strengthened its trademark distinctiveness, turned subculture into canon, and showed that brand protection doesn’t have to mean rigidity. It’s a reminder that participation is the new protection. In the era of remix, the smartest brands don’t defend the line, they redraw it.

 

Nike: Iteration as a Legal Strategy

Nike’s swoosh is one of the most valuable marks in modern history, and one of the most frequently reinterpreted. Every collaboration, from Off-White to Travis Scott, and every new platform, from .SWOOSH digital goods to AI-designed apparel, serves a dual purpose: cultural relevance and legal renewal. Each variant is a fresh trademark registration and a fresh moment of distinctiveness in the marketplace. Nike’s genius isn’t just “Just Do It.” It’s “Just Evolve It.” By continuously redesigning product lines, slogans, and digital experiences, Nike ensures that no single iteration grows stale, or expires. In a world where duplication is easy, iteration is ownership.

 

Burberry: Heritage as a Renewable Resource

Burberry’s brand has survived for nearly two centuries not by standing still, but by cycling through reinvention. When the mark was reintroduced a bespoke serif wordmark in 2023, it wasn’t a nostalgic gesture, it was a renewal of trademarkable identity. Each new typeface, pattern, and mark created a new layer of legal protection and cultural expression. Burberry’s evolution shows that heritage isn’t history, it’s a renewable asset. When brands document and reinterpret their visual and verbal DNA, they create a lineage of ownable design that can be modernized without losing authenticity.

 

Supreme: Enforcement as Expression

Few brands blur the line between culture and compliance like Supreme. The streetwear giant’s red box logo, inspired by Barbara Kruger’s conceptual art, has become a global shorthand for scarcity and status. When counterfeiters and copycat brands like “Supreme Italia” flooded Europe, the company didn’t simply litigate, it made enforcement part of its narrative. Supreme’s strict control of distribution, trademark defense, and limited-run drops aren’t just operations; they’re performance art about exclusivity. Supreme’s model proves that policing a brand can also promote it. In the marketplace of meaning, defense is a form of design.

 

The Dark Side of the Public Domain

The same expiration that inspires innovation can also unleash absurdity. When Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, the first adaptations weren’t children’s stories but horror films. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey reimagined the bear as a feral killer stalking the Hundred Acre Wood. Another campaign cast him as “Winnie-the-Screwed” in a phone ad complaining about overpriced bills. Public domain doesn’t just liberate culture, it fractures it. For every thoughtful reinterpretation, there’s a dark wave remix. Yet even this chaos proves the point: when copyright ends, creativity begins, whether or not the original creator approves.

 

The Brand System as Legal Framework

Strong brands are built on structure, not spontaneity. The most resilient follow a few principles:

• Belief System (Mission, Vision, Values): Purpose defines why a brand evolves, not just what it sells
• Identity (Presence & Personality): Every expression (logo, color, sound, motion) should be memorable, particular, and scalable
• Architecture (Structure & Governance): Choose models that fit your portfolio strategy
  • Branded House: Unified equity, efficient defense
  • House of Brands: Isolated risk, diverse markets
  • Hybrid: Flexibility through endorsement
• Culture (People & Behavior): Brands live through those who activate them. Governance isn’t bureaucracy, it’s brand integrity
• Performance (Measurement & Management): Equity, recall, preference, share, loyalty, and legal wins are all brand KPIs

A brand isn’t an artifact. It’s an ecosystem, adaptive and interdependent, both shaped by and shaping the culture that surrounds it.

 

Rules for the Remix Era

• Refresh deliberately: Every 3–5 years, audit identity and refile marks to sustain distinctiveness
• Version your icons: Treat symbols like product lines, iterative, traceable, and renewable
• Invite reinterpretation: Channel fan culture through sanctioned collaborations instead of cease-and-desists
• Design redundant protection: Copyright and trademark together to create resilience across every brand expression, visual, motion, and sonic.
• Measure and enforce: Governance is creative work; protecting your brand is part of expressing it

 

The Bottom Line for Branding

Legal structures aren’t the enemy of creativity, they’re its rhythm section. Disney turned expiring IP into an evolving identity. McDonald’s transformed parody into participation. Nike, Burberry, and Supreme show how evolution, heritage, and enforcement can coexist as brand behaviors. And as copyrights continue to lapse, from Steamboat Willie to Batman, a new generation of creators will reinterpret those icons, sometimes with reverence, sometimes with chaos. The internet has made extension impossible, but reinvention inevitable.

The lesson? To protect your past, keep designing your future. Because in the age of remix culture, the most enduring brands are not the most famous, they’re the most adaptive.

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by Eric Kogelschatz

Designing for Connection: The Experience Ecosystem & Service Ecology

Design is the thoughtful expression of conceptual ideas in the form of visual elements to define purpose and achieve desired outcomes improving the human experience. Simply, design defines the relationships between people, products, and the world around them. However, as our lives traverse analog and digital experiences, the work of design has become less about creating and more about transforming systems. Service design lives in that space between creativity and complexity, where every interaction drives the cadence of experiences. To understand how a service truly works, designers don’t just map journeys, they map ecologies.

Mapping the Invisible

A service ecology map doesn’t just chart what a customer sees. It reveals the network behind the scenes, the people, partners, processes, and technologies that bring a service to life. It exists to:

• Map the actors and stakeholders who play a role in the service
• Understand the relationships, the creative friction that evolves the experience
• Imagine new service concepts by reorganizing how these actors connect and create value together

Used in workshops, mapping a service ecology can feel like zooming out on a city where you see how all the streets within the macro and micro systems intersect. It widens the creative field, transforming creative problem-solving into the craft of origination in constant flow and flux.

 

Ecology vs. Ecosystem

The language of systems matters. Ecosystem describes the structure, the framework of users, channels, and flows within experiences. Ecology describes the energy inside it, the relationships that make it thrive or collapse. Design lives in the tension between the two: form and function, structure and movement, system and story.

Every ecosystem is built on interactions that occur across channels and touchpoints. Channels are the mediums through which people engage, a website, a retail environment, a mobile app, a call center. Touchpoints are the moments that happen within those channels, the tap, the conversation, the purchase, the pause. They are where emotion and meaning take shape. Understanding both is essential: channels create access; touchpoints create connection. Friction can inhibit or empower the user within the ecosystem and the ecology overall.

 

Where the Wild Things Are

Two truths define every service:

• People’s needs are always changing
• People experience services across multiple channels and touchpoints

When viewed from a business perspective, these truths become tools for modeling value. By mapping costs and revenues across both the customer journey and the ecosystem of interactions, organizations can see where value is created, and where it disintegrates. In application, this means tracking, monitoring, and analyzing:

• Across the journey: Looking at costs and returns stage by stage reveals where customers find meaning and where friction exists
• Across touchpoints: Evaluating each interaction shows which channels drive connection, and which exhaust resources

This is the shift from user experience to service experience, where value isn’t just designed, it’s distributed.

The Living Blueprint

Within the ecosystem and ecology, the service design blueprint connects everything. The frontstage and backstage. The human and the operational. It’s not a static diagram, but a living map of how a service adapts to change. Service design, at its best, is an act of choreography and orchestration. It is how we synchronize business and behavior, intention and interaction. It’s not just about designing systems, it’s about designing relationships that can evolve and revolutionize the world around them. Because in the end, every service is an ecosystem of connection and ecology of energy. And when we understand the system, we don’t just make it work better, we make it feel alive.

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by Eric Kogelschatz

The New Era of Shipping and Marketing

Resilience and Recovery

As supply chains recover from years of disruption and investors brace for economic headwinds, the transportation sector is being reshaped by creativity, strategy, and resilience. Many organizations remain in triage mode, but forward-thinking leaders are implementing reframing models to uncover new solutions. The opportunity now lies not in returning to what once was, but in designing smarter, more responsible approaches to marketing and operations that help organizations thrive amid uncertainty.

Navigating Economic Uncertainty

The path to stability begins with understanding the possible shapes of recovery. Economists identify several models, from V-shaped rebounds to L-shaped stagnations, each offering a different vision for how the economy might evolve. The most realistic scenario may be Y-shaped, reflecting a divided recovery where some sectors rebound quickly while others lag behind. For transportation leaders, this means preparing for uneven conditions and making deliberate decisions about how to allocate time, resources, and budget. There is no such thing as “business as usual.” Resiliency now requires agility, innovation, and foresight.

The Global Shipping Outlook

After years of volatility caused by the pandemic, geopolitical tensions, and inflationary pressures, global shipping began to stabilize in 2023. Capacity became more predictable, but volume and reliability remain challenges. As infrastructure investments grow, overcapacity and pricing pressures will define the near-term future. Even with uncertainty, the industry is entering a new era of transformation, driven by decarbonization, digitalization, and an increased demand for transparency across the supply chain.

Seven Shipping Trends You Need to Know

1. Market Normalization with Caution

Shipping has returned to predictable capacity levels, but volumes remain low. The industry is likely to face continued volatility and potential pricing wars as carriers compete for stability.

2. Globalization with Interference

Global trade continues to expand, but rising geopolitical tensions have slowed the pace. Companies are increasingly pursuing domestic manufacturing and distributed sourcing to mitigate risk.

3. Decarbonization and the Cost of Sustainability

The journey to net-zero emissions is underway, requiring significant investment in green technology, infrastructure, and alternative fuels. These costs will inevitably be passed through the supply chain to the end customer, emphasizing the need for transparent communication about corporate responsibility.

4. Transloading on the Rise

Transloading, shifting freight from international to domestic intermodal transport, continues to gain momentum. This approach increases speed to market and agility, allowing shippers to respond rapidly to changing market conditions.

5. Transparency as the Antidote to Information Asymmetry

Information asymmetry remains one of the greatest barriers to efficiency. True progress will come from transparent, synchronized data systems that enhance visibility from source to customer, creating shared value across the supply chain.

6. Standardization for Stability and the Risk of Stagnation

Standardization streamlines operations and ensures consistency, but it can also constrain innovation. The challenge for the future is to balance operational efficiency with creative experimentation and technological evolution.

7. Investing for a Sustainable Future

Investment in infrastructure and equipment, from ports to chassis manufacturing, is accelerating. These efforts signal confidence in a more sustainable, resilient logistics ecosystem, built to withstand future disruptions.

Smart and Responsible Marketing

In times of uncertainty, marketing is not an expense, it’s an investment in relevance and resilience. Companies that remain visible and continue to communicate effectively through downturns recover faster and gain market share. Smart and responsible marketing begins with empathy and strategy: understanding evolving customer behaviors, reaffirming commitments, and designing communications that reflect authenticity and trust.

The Five Principles for a New Marketing Era

• Refresh the Customer Mindset: Identify new motivations, pain points, and opportunities. Conduct interviews, surveys, and persona development to uncover actionable insights that inform both strategy and creative execution.
• Reassure the Customer: Instill confidence through consistent communication, thought leadership, and customer-first initiatives. Use content marketing, sales acceleration programs, and community engagement to build trust and loyalty.
• Renew the Vision and Strategy: Revisit brand principles, reposition offerings, and define a compelling purpose that reflects current realities. Measure brand health regularly to ensure alignment with customer needs.
• Reassess the Work: Continuously calibrate creative and marketing efforts. Measure effectiveness, experiment with A/B testing, and apply insights from analytics to optimize outcomes.
• Recover and Reimagine: Adopt a customer-centric mindset. Innovate new products and experiences, embrace digital-first marketing, and collaborate internally to improve efficiency and employee engagement.

Integrating Sales and Marketing

The line between marketing and sales has blurred. B2B customers increasingly self-educate, expecting seamless digital experiences that mirror consumer brands. A unified approach, where marketing attracts and nurtures leads while sales converts and deepens relationships, is critical. Customer journey mapping helps visualize this integration, ensuring every touchpoint, from awareness to advocacy, is purposeful, relevant, and measurable.

Transformation is Now

Supply chain transformation is not a distant goal — it’s happening now. Leaders in shipping and logistics have an opportunity to redefine their industries by combining operational excellence with strategic creativity. Through resilience, innovation, and empathy, the sector can navigate uncertainty, embrace sustainability, and enter a new era of connection between commerce, community, and the planet.

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by Eric Kogelschatz

Creative Friction

Creative Friction: How to Engineer Ideas

Creative friction is the purposeful collision of different perspectives—disciplines, departments, industries, functions, demographics, and psychographics—to generate new ways of thinking. Done well, it turns tension into forward motion. The goal isn’t to “win” an argument; it’s to make the work, and the outcomes, unmistakably better.

What Creative Friction Is (and Isn’t)

A design choice, not an accident. Invite strategy to rub shoulders with design, media with technology, transportation with education—on the same brief, at the same time.

• Divergent by design: Friction widens the map from a single “right path” to many promising routes that can be tested, combined, or discarded.
• Different from UX friction: In user experience, we remove friction for customers. In creative development, we add the right friction for teams to unlock insight. Knowing when each applies is a leadership skill.

Why It Works

• It broadens inputs: Cross-functional conversations surface references, research, and lived experience a single discipline would never bring alone.
• It balances strengths: Some people think in words, others in systems, others in visuals or sound. Friction translates across modes and makes ideas travel farther.
• It builds inclusion: Diverse voices are not just present—they’re weighed and integrated. Brand decisions become more representative and more resilient.
• It speeds learning: When research and making happen in parallel (formal workshops + informal hallway checks), cycles compress and quality rises.

Where to Put the Friction

Upfront research
Blend formal (interviews, co-creation, data pulls) with informal (quick pulses, observation). Use participatory methods when you need voices in the room; use observational methods when you need unfiltered behavior.

Inspiration & exploration
Host recurring share-outs where people bring one reference that reframes the brief. Debate why it works (or doesn’t) for the brand and audience.

Internal reviews
Put account, design, and a “5,000-foot” brand lens in the same critique. Retire the “my idea vs. your idea” dynamic. The only winner is the brand-right solution.

In-market iteration
Treat assets as evolving. Digital and real-time environments let you tune creative based on performance and feedback—without waiting for the next campaign cycle.

How to Lead It (Without Chaos)

Set psychological safety. Make it explicit: sparks welcome, perfection not required. Early shares beat finished shares.

Design multiple avenues to contribute. Some thrive in big rooms; others prefer async notes or small huddles. Offer both.

Operationalize curiosity. Schedule a monthly “cool hunt” and debate references, tech, and trends. The point isn’t consensus—it’s clarity.

Separate pride from ego. Pride fuels craft; fragile ego blocks progress. Aim critique at the work, not the person.

Map friction vs. flow. Decide where you want friction (exploration, critique) and where you want flow (handoffs, production, customer experience).

Outcomes You Can Expect

More (and better) ideas through deliberate divergent thinking.

Faster velocity as research and design co-evolve.

Stronger decisions that align with strategy, customer insight, and brand truth.

Business impact via new products, services, and experiences shaped by many—not just a few.

A 30-Day Starter Plan

Run one cross-functional review per key project. Invite at least one outsider to the core team. Prompt: “What does this mean for the brand?”

Adopt the “Spark Rule.” Share early. Ask “What if…?” three times before judging.

Launch a 45-minute monthly cool hunt. Each person brings one reference; discuss why it matters.

Create a friction map. For your current workflow, mark “Friction” (explore) vs. “Flow” (execute). Adjust meetings and milestones accordingly.

Two Useful Analogies

Jazz & jam bands: Improvisation works when each instrument listens, responds, and leaves space. That’s creative friction in motion.

Curation: Great curators push storytellers beyond their “one way” version so it resonates now, not just in the past. Friction keeps stories—and brands—alive.

Closing Thought

Creative friction isn’t conflict—it’s choreography. Invite difference on purpose. Give it structure. Protect the room. Then let the best idea win because it is brand-right, customer-true, and future-ready.

 

 

Fricition is not resistance. it is the catalyst for creativyty. When multidisciplinary teams collaborate, the impossible is made possible.

Creative friciong is the catalyst for divergent thinking. and going beyond the unknown

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by Eric Kogelschatz

Design: A Catalyst for Cultural Change

There was a time when the internet was wonderfully weird. When MySpace let you hack your own profile HTML. When GeoCities Neighborhoods pulsed with strange, animated GIFs and scrolling marquees. When creativity wasn’t optimized, it was expressed. Back in the day, the internet wasn’t designed for brands. It was designed for people. We built for ourselves, not for algorithms, templates, or standards. And then, ironically, the tools meant to make the web more creative began to tame it.

When Was the Last Time You Made Something Weird?

Today, we have more self-service creative tools than ever before - Canva, Wix, Figma, Instagram Stories, TikTok - yet the web has never looked more uniform. In our pursuit of scalability and polish, we’ve standardized creativity into a grid. We’ve built for others — not for ourselves. Brand standards, design systems, and templates have made creation efficient, but also sterile. They’ve become the invisible architecture of conformity. And yet, the pendulum is swinging back. We’re seeing a new era of creative rebellion — one that values improvisation, imperfection, and individuality. The internet is rediscovering its human side.

Why Design Systems Still Matter

This isn’t an argument against systems. It’s an argument for living systems. Design should never be static — it should evolve. A true design system isn’t a museum of patterns; it’s a workshop for continuous change. The best design systems are built for adaptability. They empower cultural transformation as much as they enforce visual consistency. They integrate adaptive research — connecting real consumer insights with evolving creative expression. In other words, a design system shouldn’t just document — it should listen. Think of it like jazz. The structure (the pattern library) is there, but the magic happens in the improvisation. When designers are empowered to evolve a system — to adapt, remix, and respond — design becomes a living dialogue between brand and audience.

Honoring Friction: Rethinking Accessibility

The future of design must also embrace friction, not eliminate it. Designer and disability advocate Liz Jackson challenges how our industry talks about empathy. Too often, “inclusive design” becomes a checklist for compliance, a way to meet standards rather than connect with people. She reminds us: empathy isn’t pity. It’s partnership. True inclusion requires participation. It demands that people with disabilities are part of the design process, not just the end users of it.

Consider Domino’s Pizza, which was sued in 2016 by a blind customer unable to order through their website or app because they weren’t compatible with screen readers. When the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in 2019 that Domino’s digital properties were covered under the ADA, it changed everything: websites and apps became extensions of physical spaces and therefore, public accommodations. That decision wasn’t just about compliance. It was about access, about ensuring everyone can participate in digital life. Inclusion should not be seen as a burden, but as an engine for better design. Honoring friction — the things that make us different — leads to more thoughtful, humane systems.

Why Business Needs Design

Impact

Design drives at three levels:

• Tactical: product-level innovation
• Systemic: service-level transformation
• Experiential: shaping culture and behavior

Partnerships

Businesses must collaborate with educational institutions, start-ups, and consultancies to keep design thinking fresh and relevant.

Emotion

The most powerful brands don’t just meet needs — they create meaning. Design is how companies connect emotionally, not just transactionally, with their audiences.

The Intersection of Strategy and Design

Strategy defines why. Design expresses how. They are two sides of the same idea — one logical, one lyrical. Design without strategy is decoration; strategy without design is abstraction. When they intersect, they form identity — the moment when concept meets clarity.

What Is a Brand, Really?

A brand isn’t just a logo, or even a story. It’s an evolving relationship between company and culture. Design theorist Debbie Millman calls branding a historical reflection of our collective desires — a mirror of who we want to be. Designer Forest Young calls it the intersection of math and magic — the blend of precision and intuition that creates something memorable. And at Wieden+Kennedy, branding is understood through product, service, voice, visual, and behavior — the full ecosystem of experience.

At its core, a brand is four things:

• Concept: The idea that drives meaning.
• Character: The personality that shapes how it behaves.
• Container: The visual and verbal identity that holds it together.
• Clarity: The discipline that keeps it focused and understood.

The New Creative Renaissance

We are entering an era where creativity is being reborn, not as rebellion against systems, but as a redefinition of them. It’s about making design systems flexible enough to allow experimentation. About using research not to restrict, but to evolve. About building brands that are not static symbols, but adaptive organisms. So, when was the last time you made something weird? Maybe that’s where the future of creativity begins, in the courage to color outside the lines again.

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by Eric Kogelschatz