Mindshift

Mindshift Brand Development

Branding for a Youtube channel about religious deconstruction

I approached Brandon in 2023 with ideas to strengthen the look of his new Youtube channel, Mindshift. It was already growing an audience and building on his prior success on Youtube as a book reviewer.

Our conversation led to the branding of Mindshift (formerly "Mind Shift"), beginning with a logo and channel art design and followed by more brand exploration. Brandon involved his audience by using community polls to gather feedback on logo iterations.

Logo

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe...”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

There are tradeoffs in social belonging. At its worst, conformity erases autonomy. When that becomes the cost, some choose the risk of individuality. Building on firsthand experience, Mindshift advocates for saving the individual from groups that would do harm to their uniqueness and independence. The logo is an inspirational symbol of unyielding individuality when challenged by the status quo.

White squares represent minds bound by ideology ("the tribe"). They're held together by a grid that rigidly maintains their size, orientation, and colorlessness. The negative space creates a cage or prison, a sign of social and ideological control. The logo is extremely simple — a square made of squares — so that "thinking inside of the box" is hinted at strongly.

The orange square represents a mind that's shifted. It bears the same shape as the others, where human similarity and kinship remain, but the color and slant mark a difference — the mark of an individual, strength, and personal sovereignty.

Brand

The visuals are fun, geometric, kinetic, and a little edgy. If edges aren't sharp, then they're often blurred by an atmospheric sense of heat. Abstract references to metamorphic rock, gems, metals, or diamonds are intended to symbolize what commonly goes on inside of those who undergo religious deconstruction.

Like the rock, a person is transformed by the pressure, heat, and fracturing set against them by nature. Energy enters a person to face this challenge, changing them into something new over time. This narrative supports Mindshift, a channel dedicated to challenging authority, including one’s own beliefs, in pursuit of truth, honesty, and rationality.

Outcome

The channel design was met with strong enthusiasm from both Brandon and his community. Since then, Mindshift has grown from 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers, and Brandon has made appearances on shows like The Hang-Up with Matt Dillahunty, MythVision, Deep Drinks, Paulogia, and hosted popular guests on his own podcast like Trent Horn and Britt Hartley.