Great brands aren’t comprehensive. They’re coherent.

Nicole Gerhardt, head of brand at Transamerica, makes the case for restraint in brand design, arguing that the distinction between competence and coherence matters greatly.

Brand people are good at adding things.

Another message. Another audience. Another proof point. Another visual device. Another version of the story because, apparently, this one needs to work a little harder for sales. And HR. And investors. And customers.

Before long, a brand that started with a clear idea is carrying around the strategic equivalent of an overpacked suitcase.

We rarely ask the more useful question: What can we take away?

There is a tendency to associate simplicity with minimalism. Fewer colours. Cleaner layouts. Shorter copy. More white space. But restraint in branding isn't really an aesthetic choice. It's a strategic one.

The strongest brands tend to be very clear about what belongs to them – and equally clear about what doesn't. They don't need to communicate every attribute in every interaction. They don't chase every cultural moment. They don't reinvent themselves every time someone inside the organisation gets tired of looking at the same thing.

They leave things out. And that's harder than it sounds.

Because organisations reward addition. Adding something feels like progress. It demonstrates that we've listened, accommodated and responded.

Taking something away can feel uncomfortable. Someone's message didn't make it onto the page. A business unit doesn't see its specific language represented. A stakeholder asks, "But where do we say...?"

Brand leaders know this moment well. The instinct is to squeeze it in.

But every time we make room for one more thing, we make everything else a little less clear. That's the trade-off we don't talk about enough.

Great brands aren't comprehensive. They're coherent. That distinction matters.

A brand doesn't need to explain the entire business. Its job is to make the business easier to understand, recognise and remember. That requires choices. Sometimes, fairly brutal ones.

Which signals should people recognise instantly? What do we repeat relentlessly? And, perhaps most importantly, what are we willing to leave unsaid?

A strong visual identity system shouldn't need six graphic devices fighting for attention on every page. Distinctive assets become distinctive through disciplined use, not sheer quantity. More ingredients don't necessarily make something richer. Sometimes they just muddy the flavour.

Restraint takes confidence. It means resisting the urge to refresh something simply because we’ve seen it a thousand times internally. It means understanding what feels repetitive to us may just be becoming familiar to everyone else.

None of this is an argument for boring brands – quite the opposite. When fewer things are competing for attention, the things that matter have room to become more powerful.

In a profession that spends a lot of time asking what else we could do, perhaps one of the smartest questions a brand leader can ask is much simpler: “What can we leave out so that what matters most shines through?”