We were lucky to catch up with Larry Nguyen & Wendy Tuan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Larry & Wendy, appreciate you joining us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of being an entrepreneur or creative is the kind of crazy stuff that happens from time to time. It could be anything from a disgruntled client attacking an employee or waking up to find out a celebrity gave you a shoutout on TikTok – the sudden, unexpected hits (both positive and negative) make the profession both exhilarating and exhausting. Can you share one of your craziest stories?

For us, most negatives end up being positives, because, more often than not, they teach you something that you wouldn’t have learned if you hadn’t gone through that situation. You learn from failures mostly, and we’ve had our fair share. That said, we would love to share a positive story that really blew our minds.

When we first started Outfit we had several goals — dreams, really — that felt a bit out of reach, two of which were 1) to be published in a design book or publication, and 2) to be featured in any of the prominent design blogs in our industry. In 2020, both of those things happened in ways beyond anything we could have ever imagined.

We were featured on The Dieline, Brand New, and then published by two different publishers (gestalten Verlag and Hoaki Books) — all in one year! 2020 was a banner year for us, because as an independent studio, you constantly feel a sense of “imposter syndrome” and to be validated by thought leaders and peers in your space, it was…just an incredible feeling of “making it” and knowing we were doing something right.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Outfit Branding & Design is a Los Angeles-based husband-and-wife studio with a combined over 30 years of design experience.

We specialize in helping companies find their voice and stand out from the crowd through bold and compelling storytelling. This includes brand strategy, logo design, visual identity, naming and verbal identity, and implementation across print and digital.

With backgrounds in branding, illustration, creative direction, graphic design and fashion, what sets us apart is our approach: a potent mix of bold, contemporary visual appeal and detailed, effective strategy supported by efficient, personalized service.

We are just two creatives with international backgrounds and deep experience on a mission to spread good design to make the world not only more beautiful, but more collaborative, understanding, and authentic.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson we needed to unlearn was that “branding” and visual identity are not the same thing. They are not. This idea was something that is so integrated into the discourse of our industry, that these terms seemed to be interchangeable. It was through our experiences that we had come to “unlearn” this and understand that while visual identity is integral to communicating and expressing one’s brand, it is not “branding”. “Branding” is everything a company or person does to cultivate a desired perception, reputation and image, while visual identity is one means to communicate that image.

Through this understanding, we also learned that great visual identity systems are not the end-all, be-all to great “branding”, but it is an extremely efficient, effective and valuable solution.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

For us, we really believe in the power of design to not only carbonate life and generate culture, but to transform ideas into something tangible and real, to inspire people about a different perspectives, and to better understand our world. As two individuals with cross-cultural backgrounds, we feel passionate about identity because it’s almost a kind of ethnography — a way for us to make sense of our world and discover meaning in the things we all want to achieve and do.

Contact Info:

• Website: weareoutfit.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/outfit_branding
• Facebook: http://fb.com/outfitbranding
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/outfit-branding/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/outfitbranding
• Other: http://behance.net/outfitbranding