Why Field of Practice treats branding as a practice of change

Field of Practice’s Co-founders Kristin Lueke and Nermin Moufti treat branding as a question of who is not in the room when the decisions get made. “Design is never neutral,” they tell us, so a brand that states values has to pay for them in how the business runs. The women and member-owned strategic design studio that they run from Chicago and New Mexico was taking on clients by January 2021, before it even had a name or a bank account. They built it to test whether two people could make a living on a four-day week that they shaped themselves. In this interview, they talk to us about how they decide what to take on, what Moufti finds an Arabic and English identity requires that an English-only one doesn’t, and why growth for them is in depth rather than scale. TBI: Hi Kristin and Nermin! How has the summer been in Chicago and New Mexico? FP: Our summer hours were full and flew by quickly. It was an excellent season to practice slowing down and being deliberate with our choices.