Hippo Blog

At Flying Hippo, we don’t take branding lightly, and we love brands that know their audience and stick to their guns when it comes to voice, imagery and audience engagement. That’s why we’re fans of Duluth Trading Co. Duluth Trading...

Jim wakes up on a beautiful spring Saturday. On his way out the door, he laces up his favorite pair of Nikes. He admires the beautiful simplicity of the swoosh that is like a proud badge of honor. As he opens the door to the garage, he walks past the...

There is a great video I saw the other day of a male Bird of Paradise in the depths of a South American jungle attempting to woo a female with his mating dance. The dance was full of stunning visual displays, unique verbal expressions and physical gy...

What is a brand? A nice logo? A catchy tagline? An image? A font?  A color? A set of standards? While a brand can’t exist without these items, the true definition of a brand is much, much more than those things.  Great brands move far beyond thes...

I was waxing nostalgic the other day, looking at some old college pictures and I couldn’t help but laugh at what I saw. Staring back at me, some decades later, was an embarrassing picture of me with a mustache, feathered hair and a pair of sweet b...

Kids are bottomless fonts of knowledge (when they're not yelling at you). You can learn a lot of branding lessons from them if you're paying attention....

The design world changes fast. It seems like there’s always new tools, approaches and tactics to be used on websites. Keeping up with it all is imperative to being a good designer. Practice makes perfect for sure, but in order to practice well, you...

Rock bands know how to do branding right. Think about how kids in middle school and high school show devotion to bands in unique ways: they write the names of the bands they like on binders, notebooks and backpacks. They buy t-shirts to flaunt in the...

Everyone has a few heroes in their life. As of recently, anyone who creates Creative Commons artwork has become a hero in my book. Seriously, they’re heroes. All of them. While everyone can take a picture and upload it to Flickr, it takes a sp...

Consider the relationship between designers and developers in the context of building websites. Your site’s design might be stellar, but if the page’s code smells, the whole experience might end up a wash. Conversely, you can have beaut...

So, you want to hire a web designer for your company? This is where I’m supposed to say that you should just hire us instead of your own designer. But I won’t do that. Maybe you actually need a web designer on your team. I can tell you from exper...

Police officers have a fascinating way of talking to the public. You might notice this on TV news. For instance: Let’s say two people were fighting on a street corner one night and peeled off in their cars when the cops came. If the story en...