Notes from applying my own philosophy to MHSHIEAVI: what I decided first, what I left open, and why.
It is easy to give advice about foundations. It is harder to sit down and write your own.
This year I built the brand for MHSHIEAVI — the platform you are reading now — and I tried to follow the same order I recommend to others.
What came first
Not the logo. The first page I wrote was a plain description of how I think: I look for the question behind the request, I connect disciplines, and I care about both the reasoning and the finished work.
From there came one sentence that everything else grew from: roots before growth.
What I deliberately left open
A brand for a person has to leave room to learn. So I separated three things in the brand book:
- Established: what is true now — my background, philosophy and visual assets.
- In development: positioning language and audience, which will be refined through real work.
- Proposed: new ideas to test before they become rules.
That distinction keeps me honest. It stops a personal brand from making claims that experience hasn't earned yet.
What I'm still figuring out
How to share unfinished thinking without it feeling unfinished. This notebook is part of that experiment. Some pieces here will be questions rather than answers — and I'd genuinely like to hear yours.
What part of your own business have you never put into words?
Write back to me