Roots

A great deal has changed over the past year. I packed up one home, began settling into another, and watched my children step farther into their own lives while I learned what still held true within me. And yet, amid the change, something steady remains. 

In branding, that steadiness is called a root idea. It’s the quality that survives redesigns, new campaigns, and changing trends. The thing that remains recognizable even as everything around it evolves. A long time ago, National Geographic added a yellow frame to unify its covers — a seemingly simple design decision that became a beacon on newsstands. Levi’s stitched a red tab onto its jeans to help factory workers identify them — an afterthought that turned into an icon. The New Yorker stayed loyal to a serif typeface others dismissed as fussy, now inseparable from its voice.

What began as practicality or conviction became the thing remembered. 

The same is true in our work. The root often hides in plain sight: the phrase we return to, the quality that lit the first spark, the instinct that keeps returning.

People have roots too. Relationships come and go, and we find ourselves in places we didn't expect. Yet beneath those changes are qualities that keep returning — the things that delight us, the questions that continue to matter, the way we move through the world.

Perhaps that's why periods of change can be clarifying. As the surface rearranges itself, we’re given another opportunity to notice what remains.

I'm no longer convinced identity is something we invent. It feels more like something we uncover — in ourselves, and in the work that is unmistakably ours. ✦

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Related Little Letters

The Art of Letting Go • The Life Beneath the Work • The Shape of Change

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