Craft — Volume 1
Only a small fraction of our work is ever seen. For every finished identity that reaches our portfolio, there are dozens of sketches, discarded concepts, unfinished directions and quiet moments of exploration that never leave the studio. Craft is our ongoing archive of these moments.
By Adam Charlton · 15 July 2026
Posted in Insight
Craft documents the repetition, iteration and critical thinking behind our branding process. Fragments of the process: sketches, experiments, dead ends and discoveries that gradually bring into shape stronger ideas.
Good branding is difficult. It demands research, understanding, judgement, creativity, patience, and perhaps most importantly, trust between client and practitioner. Every project brings its own context, restrictions, industry biases and audiences to consider. There are no shortcuts. There are no universal formulas. There is only the process of developing our approach, learning how to ask better questions, forming stronger, clearer brand strategies, exploring more relevant possibilities, and making better decisions.
The archive
I’ve written about why developing craft is important to our practice. The idea for a visual archive came in early 2020 when I travelled back to the UK, just before the world shut down. What was meant to be a short visit became months of lockdown, with flights home repeatedly cancelled.
During this time, I was fortunate enough to continue working remotely with clients in Hong Kong. Mornings were filled with calls, afternoons with project work, and by late afternoon, once Hong Kong had finished for the day, I had something that had been in short supply for years: uninterrupted time!
I started opening old project folders, revisiting completed projects, pulling out early concepts, sketches, rejected ideas and forgotten explorations. Over the following months, slowly, a single archive folder began to grow.
Eventually, I made it back to Hong Kong, endured three weeks of hotel quarantine, and life accelerated once again. Projects continued. New work was added alongside old until, by BrandCraft’s tenth anniversary in 2023, the archive had quietly become a record of more than a decade of our practice.
Opening it again recently was a bit of a Pandora’s Box type of moment… Hundreds of ideas, concepts and moments of old work.
The unseen work
A tiny percentage of our work ever sees the light of day. That might sound surprising, but it is simply the nature of the creative practice.
Branding isn’t about finding the first good idea. It’s about exploring possibilities, testing assumptions, challenging directions, and gradually filtering hundreds of decisions into something that feels inevitable and honest.
Every identity we publish represents countless conversations, sketches, revisions and discarded routes that remain invisible.
Looking back through the archive, what surprised me most wasn’t the sheer amount of work but the amount of time spent thinking. There are fragments that later informed projects years afterwards. There are unresolved ideas waiting for the right brief. There are visual experiments that taught us something, even though they were never shown to anyone.
Since I began collecting these moments, Craft has always felt like a side quest. Lately I’ve realised it isn’t. This is the work. The archive isn’t separate from the practice; it is the practice! A quiet record of years spent learning, refining and trying again.
Craft — Volume 1
This first volume includes highlights from 2022-2024, with more series to follow.
“A man, sitting in his house, attending the way, will be heard a hundred miles distant. Work done truly and conscientiously, in isolation, calls unknown friends.”
— Confucius
I first heard this quote on the wonderful 2Bobs Podcast.
10,000 Hours
Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea that mastering a complex skill takes around 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
As the son of an engineer, I can’t resist it; let’s do the maths…
Key assumptions:
20% of my working time is spent on branding - either ideating, developing and revising.
I work an average of 5.5 days a week, 08:00 > 19:00, excluding lunch, let’s call it ~ 10 hours per day.
I work an average of 50 weeks a year, two weeks spent visiting family over December.
20% x 5.5 (days worked per week) x 10 (hours worked a day) x 50 (weeks per year)
= 550 hours per year spent specifically on branding work
I started my own practice (first as a freelancer, then formally as a studio in 2013), but I first began working in branding for other agencies in March 2012 (3 days after landing in Hong Kong). As I write this, it is July, 2026.
This results in ~13 years and 4 months (13.3 years)
550 (hours per year) x 13.3 (years of practice)
= 7,315 hours spent on branding
10,000 - 7,315 = 2,685 hours to go!
2,685 / 550 (hours per year spent specifically on branding work) = ~4.9 years to go…
Let’s go!
:)
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About the author —
Adam moved to Hong Kong in 2012 and founded the branding agency BrandCraft. Adam has built brands for companies at every growth stage and has consulted for some of the world’s most recognised companies.
