John Gruber offers a new take on an old debate: are design templates a good idea? He's talking about blog templates, but the idea is general. And so is his conclusion:

Seth Godin brings up an example of an attitude that I see often. When you work at a company for a while, it's easy to start thinking that your company is the universe.

Last time, we looked at how branding makes things cheaper. To wrap up our series on branding, we will consider the role of branding in furthering business goals.

Last week we saw how branding should be amortized over its valuable life. This week, we'll briefly look at how good branding makes other things cheaper.

Last time we looked at the definition of branding and talked about why it typically is difficult and expensive. Starting today, we'll review why it's worth it.

Branding is most expensive, most cost-effective, and least understood discipline. In the next 4 articles, I will advance 3 arguments for why it's worth investing the right amount in branding.

The position chart is ubiquitous. A set of X and Y axes representing 2 dimensions in the market and dots representing company's positions with respect to those dimensions. There are many versions. Price v. Quality. Capabilities v. Price. Price v. Value. Luxury v. Reliability. Price v. Economy. These are all interesting and useful, but why are there 2 and only 2 axes?

This post will discuss something that is at the heart of everything we do as human beings. It also shows why we have marketing and branding companies at all. Finally, it shows why I love this business so much. We are essentializing beings. That is, our way of knowing the world tends heavily towards looking for the essential, the typical, and the regular. We tend to see the general, the core, the one single "thing" that summarizes, encapsulates, or explains what we're looking at. And this is the core thought behind the importance of branding.