If you’ve been busy (and let’s be honest, most of us have), here’s a quick roundup of what we’ve been writing and thinking about lately at Rare Ideas.

We spend our time observing how brands are built, experienced, and remembered through everyday consumer behaviour and the pieces below are a snapshot of what we’ve been exploring on Substack lately.

The Art of Saying No in Brand Building

In brand building, progress is often mistaken for expansion. This article explores why the brands that endure don’t grow by adding endlessly, but by editing ruthlessly and how the discipline to say no protects meaning, memory, and long-term value.

Click here to read the full article on Substack

The Obsession with Lines Outside Restaurants (Asia Edition)

Across Asia, queues signal credibility. Long lines signal trust, craft, and consistency, turning sidewalks into the region’s most reliable form of marketing. This piece breaks down why queues endure, what actually sustains them, and why great food can’t hide behind small spaces.

Click here to read the full article on Substack

India’s Coffee Strategy: How a Beverage Became a Social Operating System

Coffee in India succeeded not because of beans, but because cafés became spaces for work, socializing, and identity. From CCD’s role in shaping urban youth culture to Blue Tokai building coffee literacy, Subko turning cafés into cultural spaces, and newer brands redefining warmth and habit, this piece looks at how coffee quietly became India’s default social infrastructure.

Click here to read the full article on Substack

If any of these resonate, we’d love for you to read along and if you’ve already read them, thank you for spending that time with us.

More to come soon. 

The Year We Chose Intention Over Volume

As 2025 comes to a close, we’ve been reflecting on the year a little differently.

Not by counting projects or milestones, but by looking at the decisions we made along the way. It was a year of being selective and committing fully to the work we believed in. Our goal stayed simple: to create distinct work we’d be proud of.

Here are a few highlights from the year

We worked on House of Croissants, a neighbourhood café built around regulars and everyday routines. In a market crowded with all-day cafés and long menus, we anchored the experience around a single product - the croissant - shaping HOC into a focused croissanterie defined by repeat visits, daily rituals, and clear category ownership. The result was a brand that feels familiar from day one and easy to return to. We’re looking forward to sharing the work soon.

We also created some exciting work for Maebe, a D2C healthy premix brand built for everyday eating. The brand was designed for people who want to eat better without strict rules or unrealistic expectations. It prioritizes convenience and consistency over perfection, making healthier choices easier to stick to in real life. The intent remained clear and grounded throughout the project, and we’re looking forward to sharing the work with you soon.

This year, we became part of Together Hospitality, a group with over a decade of building brands that become neighbourhood favourites. Known for their long-term thinking, strong internal systems, and people-first approach, Together has created some of the most loved hospitality concepts across Pune and Goa. Being involved with a group rooted in consistency, culture, and sustainable growth is something we’re proud of.

Outside of client work, 2025 also gave us space to reflect on impact.

This year, we supported the education of Latika, our first student. It wasn’t a campaign or an announcement, just a quiet, meaningful step that felt aligned with the future we want to help build. A small beginning, but an important one.

As we step into 2026, we’re not trying to move faster.

We want to keep working with care, choose projects that matter, and build relationships that last. We’re carrying forward what worked - being present, being honest, and trusting the process - and leaving behind what didn’t serve the work.

Most importantly, this year reminded us that - Rare Ideas is shaped by the people behind it.

The team you see below is what makes this place what it is. Curious, thoughtful people who care deeply about the work and enjoy learning from one another. There’s a lot of conversation, a lot of shared meals, plenty of opinions, and a genuine effort to show up every day.

This is who we are.
And we’re excited about what lies ahead.

The Quiet Death of Visual Personality.

As we head into the new year, we’ve been thinking about a simple question:

Why does everything look the same, even when it’s well designed?

The piece we’re sharing comes from a pattern we couldn’t ignore. Across products, platforms, and brands, experiences are becoming smoother and easier to use, but also harder to tell apart.

Templates, systems, and design guidelines made it faster to build and scale. They solved real problems. Over time, however, “safe” design became the default. And slowly, recognizable character started to disappear.

This article is not about calling out tools or minimalism. It is about noticing how risk-free design choices, approvals, and consensus quietly remove what makes brands distinct and memorable.

If you’re a founder building in a crowded category, or scaling something that once felt personal and opinionated, this piece reflects on questions you may already be sitting with about design decisions.

Read the full piece on Strategy Disorder by Rare Ideas.

Why Naming a Brand Is Harder Than It Seems

At some point in almost every branding building conversation, founders say, “The name has to do a lot of heavy lifting.”

It sounds reasonable. It’s also where things start to go wrong.

When you look at how strong brands are actually named, the process is far less dramatic than we imagine. Names don’t create trust or meaning on their own. They don’t carry weak strategy or compensate for unclear thinking. What they do is set expectations and then wait for the brand to live up to them.

In this piece, we break down common myths founders often run into while naming their brands. From the pressure to be descriptive, to the belief that meaning must exist on day one, to the idea that there’s a “right” way to do this at all.

Read the full piece on Strategy Disorder by Rare Ideas.