Business as Sculpture
1. Built, Found, Assembled
TLDR: While a work of sculpture can be built, found, or assembled, a brand is always necessarily an assemblage of some which is built and much which is found.
Creative Strategy + Information Design
Complexity, made legible.
Argot Nots help knowledge-rich organizations make sense of change, align around what matters, and turn shared direction into clear positioning, coherent systems, and useful digital experiences.
THE CONDITION BENEATH THE DELIVERABLE
You may be planning a new website, revisiting your brand, or struggling to explain a growing portfolio of programs and ideas. Often the deeper issue is that the organization—or the world around it—has changed, while the way you understand and present yourselves has not kept pace.
Organizational signals
What this sounds like inside the organization
“We know something needs to change, but we don’t agree on what.”
“Everyone here describes us differently.”
“We can explain each thing we do, but not the connecting idea.”
Strategic condition
What we need to understand
THE REQUEST WE HEAR
New website / Rebrand / Clearer messaging
THE CONDITION BENEATH IT
The organization—or the world around it—has changed, while shared understanding and public expression have not kept pace.
RECURRING DIMENSIONS
Change · Misalignment · Fragmentation · Uncertainty
Argot Nots’ Role
We help leaders investigate the condition beneath the deliverable before committing to the answer.
WHY THE DELIVERABLE COMES SECOND
A website, identity, or campaign may be the right answer—but it should follow a shared interpretation of what has changed and what matters now.
From uncertainty to shared direction
We help identify what should be preserved, what must evolve, and how the parts belong together. The result is a clear direction your organization can explain, use, and carry into action.
01
Understand what changed
Interpret the internal and external shifts creating pressure for a response.
02
Decide what matters
Clarify what to preserve, what to change, and what to prioritize now.
03
Align the people involved
Create shared language and a direction stakeholders can use together.
04
Give the direction form
Carry the strategy into positioning, structure, identity, and experience.
Three connected practices
Engage Argot Nots for a focused strategic question—or carry the work from diagnosis through positioning, information structure, identity, and implementation.
01
Positioning & Narrative
What should people understand and believe about us?
Clarify what your organization should stand for, emphasize, and communicate—then build a story people can understand and believe.
POSITIONING • NARRATIVE • MESSAGE ARCHITECTURE • BRAND ARCHITECTURE
02
Information & Experience
How should complicated ideas, content, services, and journeys be organized?
Organize complex information and offerings into structures that people can understand, navigate, and use.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE • CONTENT STRATEGY • RESEARCH TRANSLATION • EXPERIENCE STRATEGY
03
Identity & Implementation
How should the strategy become something people can see, use, and experience?
Translate shared direction into distinctive visual systems, interfaces, custom websites, and communications.
VISUAL IDENTITY • DESIGN SYSTEMS • CUSTOM WEBSITES • REPORTS + PRESENTATIONS
The Argot/Nots Method
We make the thinking visible.
Our process combines inquiry, interpretation, systems thinking, facilitation, and hands-on making. Clients can see how observations become an organizing idea—and how that idea guides consequential decisions.
01
Observe
Listen to stakeholders, audiences, language, artifacts, and points of breakdown.
02
Interpret
Identify patterns, tensions, assumptions, metaphors, and the deeper problem.
03
Structure
Create positioning, priorities, architectures, hierarchies, and a shared model.
04
Express
Give the direction language, identity, interfaces, narratives, and experience.
05
Test
Refine through stakeholder response, user evidence, and implementation reality.
PRINCIPAL-LED BY DESIGN
Argot Nots is a principal-led practice founded by Logan Hamilton Acton, PhD. With principal Anupama Gowda, PhD, a shared background in art, teaching, information design, metaphor, and emerging media shapes a method for listening closely, seeing relationships others miss, and making difficult ideas graspable.
You work directly with senior judgment throughout the engagement, with specialist collaborators assembled when the work requires them.
INTERDISCIPLINARY INQUIRY
Interpret complexity, meaning, assumptions, and relationships.
FACILITATION + SYNTHESIS
Help people with different expertise create a shared model.
STRATEGY THROUGH IMPLEMENTATION
Carry the organizing idea into identity, information, and digital experience.
IDEAS + FIELD NOTES
Essays and practical notes on organizations, meaning, systems, and the work of making complexity intelligible.
TLDR: While a work of sculpture can be built, found, or assembled, a brand is always necessarily an assemblage of some which is built and much which is found.
TLDR: A foundational brand strategy should inspire your team, identifying the north star that drives the business and the essential principles that define its character. By way of illustration, this list presents our core values and context for putting them into action.
TLDR: Consistently investing time in strategic thinking before implementation will save you time, money, and headaches.
Not sure whether you need positioning, a website, or something else?
If your organization has changed or the way you explain your value no longer feels sufficient in a rapidly changing world, let’s talk before the answer has already been decided. You do not need to arrive with a finished brief. A useful conversation can begin with the pressure, uncertainty, or opportunity you are trying to understand.