Over the past year, a pattern has taken shape: institutions and companies unveil new identities, backlash hits, and leaders retreat before the work has had time to land.

Cracker Barrel offers a clear example of how reaction now outpaces reality. The company refreshed its identity and faced a surge of online outrage, later revealed to be largely synthetic and amplified by bots rather than actual diners. Still, the stock dipped, leadership panicked, and the brand was rolled back almost immediately. Velocity dictated the response, and meaning never had time to crystallize.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art experienced a more consequential version of this same dynamic. A new visual system launched, local backlash followed, and a complex set of internal tensions (board politics, governance strain and leadership conflict) coalesced into a single, overly simplified narrative: the director was fired “because of the rebrand.” The truth was more layered, but complexity does not survive the modern attention economy. The design became the visible symbol onto which broader institutional anxieties were projected.

Commercial brands face different constraints, and accountability matters. American Eagle’s campaign missteps prompted legitimate criticism, raising real questions about judgment and cultural awareness. But the response cycle collapsed, then flattened, leaving little room for interpretation, learning or repair. Jaguar’s attempted repositioning showed a related pattern. Resistance arrived immediately, not for lack of ambition, but because the work entered a culture primed to judge intent at the speed of a scroll. In both cases, the environment rewards instant reaction over considered interpretation.

These moments point to a deeper shift. Not a decline in design talent or institutional courage, but a collapse in the conditions that allow meaning to form. Brands now live inside an environment of instant interpretation, distorted scale, and manufactured reaction. Algorithms reward velocity, and outrage, real or synthetic, masquerades as consensus. Boards and executives respond not to people, but to acceleration —how fast something spreads rather than what it stands for.

Inside that acceleration, branding begins to fracture. Not because the work is fragile, but because it is being asked to perform without time or care. A brand is a long-arc commitment: a signal of intention, a container for values, a vision of who an institution is becoming. Identity systems require leadership willing to withstand early turbulence so meaning has space to settle.

Cultural institutions feel this pressure in especially acute ways. Museums, libraries and civic organizations are built to hold layered interpretation and slow meaning. They were never designed for instant feedback loops. Yet increasingly they respond as if speed itself were the measure of success. When a brand is reversed quickly, it sends a clear signal, internally and externally, that risk is dangerous and conviction provisional.

Institutions have an opportunity to rebuild the conditions in which bold ideas can thrive. That means strengthening board literacy around digital outrage, aligning leadership around long-term purpose, and adopting communication strategies that anticipate early discomfort rather than panic in response to it. Strong branding has always required courage; today, it requires endurance.

Designers and studios have a role to play beyond making. Brands, especially for public and cultural institutions, do not live in decks or press releases. They live in communities, visitor experiences, local ecosystems and civic life. The work shapes how people understand belonging, trust  and power. It leaves marks that last longer than a launch cycle. The next phase of branding requires designers to operate as partners in meaning-making: anticipating friction, translating complexity for boards and leadership, and building systems resilient enough to ride out early turbulence. Risk is carried deliberately, with intention, shared alignment, and care.

Looking at 2026, the opportunity for institutions and their leaders is clear: be willing to invest in the long arc of meaning and prepared to let work breathe. Boards need to be able to distinguish signal from noise. Branding has the capacity to energize communities, open institutions that once felt closed, and anchor organizations through uncertainty. But that capacity only emerges when branding is treated as a living commitment rather than a momentary gesture.

Institutions do not need fearlessness to succeed. They need grounding and alignment around values, as well as confidence in purpose. Branding falters amid volatility when organizations have not yet built the steadiness required to meet it. The good news is that steadiness can be built.

Our communities deserve brands that carry imagination, trust and possibility. Our institutions deserve identities strong enough to invite people in without flattening who they are. This is a moment to elevate design’s role in public life, moving slower where it matters and building systems that endure.

It’s time to give branding back its backbone and with it, the courage to shape public imagination for the long term.

Jessie McGuire is Managing Partner at Thought Matter, a New York–based design and creative studio known for work that sits at the intersection of culture, public life, and civic imagination. She leads the studio’s creative vision across identity, campaigns, environments, and public-facing systems for cultural institutions, communities, and commercial brands navigating moments of change. Her work explores how design builds trust, creates belonging, and gives form to shared values, especially in places where people are too often overlooked. Jessie teaches at Pratt Institute and speaks internationally on the future of communication design, creative entrepreneurship, and the role of visual language in an age of speed.