The Phone Started Ringing From Texas
· 7 min read
Agency AEO ranked nationally for AI search optimization before Mark Palmer knew it. Calls came from Texas, South Carolina, D.C., and England. Here is why.
Long-form essays and field notes on branding, creative direction, and the making of things. No ghostwriters and no committee edits. Founder of Omythic.
· 7 min read
Agency AEO ranked nationally for AI search optimization before Mark Palmer knew it. Calls came from Texas, South Carolina, D.C., and England. Here is why.
· 5 min read
I made a deck of cards. Fifteen brand archetypes, a stack instead of a single card, a free reading, and a council room where three of them argue about your problem. The tour.
· 6 min read
Since 2023 we've been making magic in the lower level of Louisville's Hughes Building. Now the room gets its own name. Introducing the Epiphery at epiphery.com. Doors open 11.11.2026.
· 9 min read
People keep asking what the occasion is. Wrong question. An essay on suits, champagne, bourbon hostages, and why waiting for permission to enjoy your own life is the only real fashion crime.
· 5 min read
Everybody can scroll. Almost nobody can sit still. A guide to doing nothing on purpose, learned fifty years late from a porch in the West End.
· 8 min read
The other day I made a post that ruffled some feathers. Good. Feathers exist to be ruffled. The post said this: if you are thinking about hiring a professional agency to build your website right now, or you already signed the paperwork, stop and talk to me first.
· 8 min read
Somewhere in the last decade, taste got rebranded as a bottleneck. The industry decided the fix was to distribute the deciding. You cannot distribute the deciding.
· 5 min read
Today I turn 56, and I am supposed to have thoughts about it. The culture has a script for this. I have read the script. I am declining the role.
· 7 min read
I wrote a requiem in E-flat minor. Nobody commissioned it. Nobody was waiting for it. No client brief, no deadline, no stakeholder review, no invoice at the end.
· 6 min read
I named a cocktail once. Not branded. Named. These are different acts, and the difference is the entire subject of this article, so let us begin there.
· 6 min read
There is a specific kind of person the internet has been mass-producing for about fifteen years now, and you know them the moment they appear in your feed.
· 6 min read
Sit in enough brand strategy meetings and you will eventually witness a ritual as predictable as it is meaningless. Someone, usually someone with excellent glasses, will lean forward and say the word.
· 12 min read
Let us begin with the most useless sentence in the English language. "I'm sorry you feel that way." Read that again. Slowly. Notice what it does.
· 8 min read
Every time you sand down a strong idea to make a room more comfortable, you are making a deposit into an account called invisible. The returns are reliable and they are terrible.
· 7 min read
There is a version of productivity that looks good in a calendar. This is not about that version. This is about the kind of work that shows up when it wants to, which is often late, often inconvenient, and often brilliant.
· 7 min read
Right now, in my studio, there are 26 unfinished paintings. I know the exact number because I counted them recently, not out of guilt, but out of curiosity about what that number actually means.
· 15 min read
I was eight or nine years old, sitting alone in the Spalding University library in Louisville while my mother attended nursing school classes somewhere else in the building. I found the mythology section. I have essentially never left.
· 18 min read
The traditional agency is not dying. It is already dead. Most agency leaders just have not told the staff yet.
· 6 min read
Stop redesigning logos and start redesigning your relationship with your audience. The problem isn't your brand mark.
· 4 min read
A photo essay exploring the intersection of craft spirits and creative process. Shot over 30 nights in the studio.
· 10 min read
The real conversation about artificial intelligence in creative work isn't about replacement. It's about amplification.
· 7 min read
Every pixel is a decision. Every layout is an argument. If your design doesn't have an opinion, it's not design. It's wallpaper.
· 5 min read
Omythic turns away more business than it takes. Here's why that's not arrogance. It's the strategy.
· 6 min read
Nobody tells you about the isolation that comes with building something from nothing. Here's what they should have said.