For everyone curious about brands

Brands are among the most fascinating things people have ever created. And the closer you look at them, the more remarkable they become.

We make choices for or against brands every day, and rarely notice how deeply they shape our image of the world and of ourselves. Still, most people take them for granted as part of our time.

Anyone who wants to understand brands finds two kinds of literature. Guides explain how to make good advertising and successful marketing. Academic research answers single questions thoroughly, but is rarely read beyond expert circles. What brands mean to all of us falls in between.

brandvelle works in that space. Not to criticise brands and not to list what good marketing looks like, but to understand what they are, how they came about and what they do to us, as individuals and as a society.

Portraits of the brands that move the world, articles, a theory in nine chapters and the books worth reading each look at the same phenomenon from a different side.

The aim is to translate these insights, not to water them down: well-founded in substance and open in language. Because a phenomenon that concerns all of us should not be understood only by experts.

About me. I'm Paul. Brands have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, and they still surprise me. Give me one question about a brand, and I'll happily disappear down the rabbit hole for days. brandvelle is what I bring back up. And I hope it grows into a place for everyone who enjoys the dive as much as I do: people who share this curiosity, and who know that it is more fun to explore together than alone.

Paul Valentiner