Brands Personified
Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference
We are all matchmakers; we get people and brands to fall in love with each other. Building a brand is about intuition, evolution, storytelling, and building an irresistible persona. After all, people don’t fall in love with businesses, they fall in love with personalities. In this presentation, Yo Santosa will share the nuances in creating brand personas from holding on to beautiful words for inspiration to simplifying an idea and fostering optimism.
Yo Santosa is the creative mind behind three Emmy Award nominations, a renowned branding agency, two start-ups, and one publication. In 2006, she started her branding agency Ferroconcrete. She believes that “people don’t fall in love with businesses, they fall in love with personalities.” Her first client, Pinkberry, grew from one store into a global brand with more than 200 stores worldwide.
Santosa also co-founded Commodity Goods in 2013, which has been featured in GQ, Fast Company, Esquire, and W magazine. An advocate for the fastest growing metropolis in the U.S., she created LA Downtowner in 2014, a print publication that reveals an insider’s view of downtown LA’s culture, food, drinks, fashion, and the people who shape it. Santosa is inspired by timeless German design, minimalist Japanese style, Dieter Rams, and a good chicken wing.
