"I'm down to roll up my sleeves": a day in the life of Mike Perry

Walk to the office with Rocky, the studio dog.

While we have a few team members scattered across the globe, a typical day starts with getting into our NYC office, where we maintain a classic, in-person design agency. We kick things off with coffee and some Design Practice™.

Athletes, both professional and otherwise, practice far more than they actually play the sport. So why do creative professionals play more than we practice? In school, you're practising every day, then suddenly you're on the job and presumably learning by doing, so you're done practising. That makes no sense to me.

We treat Design Practice™ like a warm-up. It's always different, doing little exercises or upskilling. That can be anything from learning new tools by doing quick tutorials on programs like Spline or After Effects to recreating vintage bottle labels or dissecting and reimagining our own assets to make studio ephemera.

I got my start in-house at NBC Sports, creating everything from the visual identity system's look and feel to commercials and any other promotional materials (print or digital) needed for our major sports properties. After that, I transitioned to capital B Branding and packaging at agencies specializing in spirits and beer: Quaker City Mercantile, Stranger & Stranger, JKR, and Design Bridge.

Between the last branding agency and starting Tavern, I book-ended my career with another stint in-house at TikTok as a consultant strategist for their internal ad agency. In terms of starting my own agency, going back in-house first was the best decision I could have made because it really sharpened my understanding of our client's daily challenges.

We're a creative agency focused on food, beverage, and hospitality – all three of which can be found at your favourite Tavern.

What really sets us apart, though, is the branding philosophy that drives everything we design – Modern Heritage. The brands we create are timeless because they take inspiration from the past but reimagine that inspiration with an eye for present-day aesthetics and standards. When working on brands with history, we actively search for powerful visual assets that will resonate with today's audiences. We dig through archives to uncover what made the brand so great at different points in its history; then, we pair that with strategic storytelling that makes it more palatable for a modern audience while ensuring its original essence remains.

Our capabilities don't stop with logos and identities. Again, it's all about helping our clients solve their most pressing creative business challenges. We look at every touchpoint through the lens of the brand – obviously design, but also marketing, advertising, innovation strategy, portfolio architecture, verbal ID, experiential, and packaging. For some clients, we even act as fractional CMOs.

No one could pick a favorite child, but if I had to, it would be Sizzler. However, a recent project that really left a mark was Old Grand-Dad 16 year.

We first got the brief a few years ago when Tavern started, and I was still doing more hands-on design. I ripped out something very close to the final design during an early three-day sprint. We refreshed an OGD logo that used hatching instead of the solid black fill, and there's a necker that borrows from some of the brand's packaging in the 70s.

Of course, a sprint is never the final; we always do our due diligence and explore all other options. But funny enough, in the end, that first design was still the right choice. If you look at the sprint and the final result, it's wild how similar they are. That never happens. But the first answer is often the right answer, and you need to trust your gut. And when you have great relationships with clients who trust your gut, great, challenging work makes it to the shelf.

I hate Pinterest. I HATE IT.

We all use it, and we've all got the same images pinned on our mood boards. That's why everything is starting to feel so homogenous. You can't go to Snaxshot or Dieline without seeing the same trends regurgitated over and over again. It's not doing anything for these brands and their business goals; it sure as hell isn't doing anything for the creative world or culture.

A rule at Tavern is that if you use a reference, it better be pulled from the past. Vintage rules – something between 20 and 99 years old, with cultural significance tied back to previous eras, their style, and what it all meant at the time. It should be something historical that nods to the past and can be adapted for the present. Everything else is garbage and will only add to the blurred lines between brands and everyone's basic Pinterest boards.

We need a fundamental shift in focus. Short-term agendas too often drive us, whether it's agencies chasing awards or clients prioritising immediate shareholder value. That leads to fleeting design that constantly needs rehashing instead of focusing on timeless solutions.

A significant portion of our work involves educating clients because they often misdiagnose their problems. We're frequently asked to solve issues that don't directly align with the core business objective: increasing product sales. Short or long-term, when you boil it down, that is always the end-all-be-all of a business objective.

You achieve long-term sales growth by building a consistent brand over time. The Marlboro Man was created in 1954. Leo Burnett and Phillip Morris ran him for 45 years straight – nearly half a century. That is how you achieve a strong brand: painstaking consistency and patience.

Too often, our industry is driven by short-term results when we should focus more on building lasting brand equity.

And look, I'm not saying don't have fun with it, expand it, or build upon it. The Marlboro Man extrapolated into Marlboro Country, and the world-building stretched to some of the furthest corners of marketing and culture. We all have an uncle with a box full of unclaimed Marlboro Miles.

Hands down, my absolute favourite tool is Figma Slides. It's truly revolutionary, the best design tool since Photoshop. It perfectly blends design, motion, narrative building, strategy, and storytelling, like a hybrid love-child of Keynote and Adobe. While it doesn't replace the entire studio workflow, it does streamline collaboration. I'm a huge advocate and would love to work with Figma to enhance it further.

U-Haul is just so incredibly ubiquitous. It is woven into the fabric of everyday life, or in this case, the wallpaper of the highway. You can't go ten miles without seeing a U-Haul hub, and you can pick up and drop off a truck almost anywhere.

There aren't many brands that do what they do. They serve as advertisements for themselves, and they're on the road all the time – they're more effective than any billboard could ever be. The current visual identity has seen better days. Still, it just has so much potential and so many fun components when you dig into their archives: the classic U-Haul black and orange, the overtly midcentury vehicle designs, "Mom's Attic." I could keep going…

READ WAY MORE.

On the surface, it sounds counter to what a young designer should be doing. Presumably, they should be designing more. But that's totally not the case. Read. Read. Read.

I'm a massive fan of Rory Sutherland, and I saw an interview with him recently where he said, "I don't know what you need to read to work as a lawyer; I don't know how much you need to read to work as a surgeon, what's interesting to gain 90% of the benefit of ostensive reading you only have to read about 15 books. If you just read these 15 books, you're already the best read, 3% of people working in marketing today."

That has sat with me ever since and gnaws at me. How have I not already read all of these?!? It would help me be a better creative and strategist, teach my team members, and help my clients because we'd be doing better work. So here's my personal list (different from Rory's, which you can find here). I've crafted this list to benefit young to seasoned designers, strategists, operations, and accounts.

I do encourage reading a paperback, but time is a precious commodity. Audiobooks count as reading; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.