Sway: A Journal of Branding
Brand implementation / Content creation / Corporate communications / Graphic design / Logo & brand design
Prior to 2014, there was no magazine or journal devoted to the subject of branding. At Goods & Services Branding, we thought it was high time there was.
With the launch of Sway: A Journal of Branding, our team of branding experts—with backgrounds in writing, design, digital strategy, brand strategy and decades of implementation of all of the above—set out to help marketing professionals better understand how to use branding to get an edge over the competition.
Sway takes a critical look at trends in branding and marketing, and provides succinct explanations of some of the fundamentals of the field: brand positioning, identity design, social branding, key messaging and more. With content development, editorial design and implementation all handled in-house by Goods & Services, the journal embraces the age-old axiom that the best communication “shows” rather than “tells.”
Article ideas run the gamut from playful overviews of common subjects such as brand colours and logos to deeper dives on pressing issues in the industry, such as the prevalence of social-justice-oriented advertising or strategies to improve ROI from social media spending. Loaded with data, relevant real-life examples and vivid, witty writing, Sway articles demonstrate that branding truly is a subject worth writing about—at length and as seriously as any other field in Canadian business.
Each article receives a custom design treatment for the print edition. Sway’s editorial design strategy is to always connect the look and feel of each article back to our agency brand, ensuring a level of cohesiveness even as the articles themselves can appear to diverge radically in their sensibilities: unified, but never uniform.
While Sway was originally conceived of as a print-first publication (and, we’re proud to say, an award-winning one, at that), it has also developed as a popular digital journal that can reach a wider audience. To help our digital journal stand out among marketing blogs, we take time to develop unique illustrations and other design elements to communicate a deeper level of thought and analysis. That’s also why you won’t find SEO-stuffed jargon or clickbait-y conceits: as with any branding project, we insist with Sway that words, design and strategy must be aligned to be effective.