#40. The Brand Quiz: What origami taught me about branding
Last week I travelled to Athens to attend Break the Pattern, a conference dedicated to Women in Tech organised by Women Techmakers Greece.
It was a lovely event. During my mentoring session, I met inspiring and brave women, some changing careers (Dimitra), others trying to find a meaningful place in the tech world (Anna and Christina). Conversations like these always remind me how important it is to share knowledge openly.
And during that event, something interesting happened. An idea that had been quietly sitting in the back of my mind suddenly became very clear.
That idea is The Brand Quiz: a short series of videos in which I test the brand knowledge of my social media followers while exploring the many misconceptions people still have about branding.
The goal is simple: to make branding easier to understand.
And also, selfishly, to discover which topics spark curiosity and deserve deeper exploration during my workshop.
The conference Break the Pattern in Athens. Organised by Women Techmakers Greece, it was held during International Women’s Day 2026, in Athens.
Origami and branding: an awkward combination?
Not really. If you have followed my work for a while, you know I love explaining design through real-life metaphors.
They make complex ideas easier to grasp.
For example, when I teach UX and UI design and storytelling, I often use cinema. Movies make it easy to understand user journeys: scenes become touchpoints, pacing becomes interaction design, and storytelling reveals how expectations are built.
(It also helps justify the amount of money I spend on cinema tickets and streaming subscriptions.)
Branding, however, is a more complicated beast. It has many layers, many interpretations, and a lot of confusion around it.
I have spent a long time thinking about how to explain branding in a way that is simple but not simplistic. Then, during the conference, something happened.
One of the speakers, Marily Mitropoulou, asked the audience: “What is personal branding?”
The answers were incredibly diverse. But also… incomplete. Many people associated branding only with visibility, aesthetics, or social media presence.
Which made me realise something: We still have so much to learn about branding. And in that moment, the parallel with origami became obvious.
The first episode of The Quiz Brand. The full series is available every week on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Branding is like origami
The Steps
Origami follows a sequence. Every fold depends on the previous one. Skip a step, and the final shape simply won’t work.
Brand design is exactly the same. You cannot start with the logo or the visuals before defining your audience , your purpose and the problem you are solving.
Yet I have worked with startups that wanted a polished product and beautiful visuals before even defining their audience, hoping that this would help them impress investors.
Working like this is frustrating because when the audience is unclear, no one can truly imagine how the product will fit into the world.
The Precision
Years ago, I attended an origami workshop in Kyoto.
The teacher would constantly unfold my work and ask me to redo the folds more carefully. At some point, frustrated, I thought: “Does it really matter if it’s a bit off?”
Yes. Because every new fold accumulates the error of the previous one. By the end, the whole structure becomes distorted.
Branding works exactly the same way. If you start being careless about fundamental elements, like defining your strategy or clarifying your purpose, you slowly accumulate brand debt.
And over time, that debt weakens everything the company produces.
The Patience
Origami requires patience. For the third episode of The Brand Quiz, I tried folding a crane. Let’s just say… it took many attempts.
In Japan there is a tradition that says you must fold one thousand cranes (senbazuru) to express a wish. After this experience, I have a deep respect for whoever managed to complete that challenge. :)
Branding also requires patience and time: it evolves with the company, the product, and the audience.
In origami, you often begin by copying the folds of someone more experienced. It’s part of learning the craft. But once you understand the logic behind each step, you can start creating your own figures.
Branding works in a similar way. Studying what others have done can help you learn the discipline of the process, but in the long run, you need to develop your own pattern.
This is also where AI tools come in. They can be incredibly useful with brand patterns, especially when time or patience are limited. But if the foundations of your brand are not clearly defined, the results will inevitably become generic.
Skip the process and you may end up with something that looks polished… but lacks intention.
Curious how the metaphor unfolds?
Magic Circle. The origami that will be featured in my next episode!
The first three episodes of The Brand Quiz are now online on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Watch them and see if your instincts about branding are right.
And if you’re curious to go deeper, I’m also preparing the next cohort of my live workshop Design Brands that Last, where we explore how brands are built step by step, strategy first, visuals later.