The 100 Days Project, created by Michael Bierut, is an annual assignment of SVA’s Master’s in Branding program that challenges students to explore a concept of branding every day, for 100 days. It’s an exercise in persistence — a dogged daily workout designed to push at the boundaries of brands. My 100 Day Project is called Mixed Signals.

This project originated on Spotify. You can find all the Mixed Signals playlists there.

[Rewind]

Growing up in a quiet, little farm town north of Kansas City, I spent a lot of time as a kid searching for distractions and ways to express myself. Without the internet or cable TV, a cassette recorder became an early creative outlet for me. I’d spend hours making playlists for friends, crushes, and any moment that called for a soundtrack.

[Pause]

Naturally, when presented with the 100 Days Project, I pulled from my roots. I was drawn to this idea that the mixtape was an act of translation — that it took your feelings about a subject or a person and expressed them through assembly. The meaning lived in the curation.

Brands work the same way. They’re made up of signals and connections that manufacture meaning. What would Starbucks mean without the reference to Moby Dick, Nike without Greek Mythology, or Apple without The Garden of Eden? Brands borrow from art and culture — then they translate those signals into identity. What happens when we flip that translation around? What can we learn about a brand when we reinterpret it as another art form? By turning a brand into a playlist, we can investigate how that brand aims to be perceived, or how it falters, and the messiness in between.

[Play]

As I curated a playlist and designed the packaging for each mixtape, some brands got the love songs they deserved. And others got the breakup albums they’d rather forget.

The process I used varied day to day. Sometimes I’d hear a song and try to work backward from there. What brand does this song sound like? Other times, something would happen in the news that would add context to a brand, and I’d explore that entry point. Many mixtapes simply express the equity or the positioning of the brand.

Applying this perspective to the same problem, over and over again, can reveal layers to the subject as well as layers to ourselves. And the commitment to doing this 100 times, every day — even days when the ideas don’t wanna come, or you’re sick, or busy with work or family — is perhaps the truest lesson of the project. Working through frustration is a lesson. Dealing with disappointment and clawing toward an idea when you’re exhausted is a lesson. And they are lessons, to me, that go better with a soundtrack.