The best brands are worlds
Lessons from Switchyards, the neighborhood work club that turned details and cleanliness into something people love
By Kyle Eertmoed
The first time I walked into Switchyards in Logan Square, I stopped and thought, what the hell is this place?
I was expecting coworking. Glass boxes, a kitchen island, a bowl of granola bars. What I found felt like a hotel lobby, a coffee shop, a college library, and a cocktail lounge had a baby and taught it how to brew coffee. The lamps were low and warm. There were books, banners, and old Italian cycling memorabilia hanging everywhere. It was opening day, and the place felt like it had been there for fifty years.
A membership is $129 a month, and it gets you into more than 40 clubs across the country. Free coffee, free Stroopwafels, high-speed internet, 24 hours a day. Switchyards delivers the kind of atmosphere people usually pay private-club prices for at a no-brainer price.
I've been designing brands for more than 20 years, and it's extremely rare for a brand to make me feel that way. So I started asking questions. Over the next few weeks I sat down with Michael Tavani, who founded Switchyards; Brandon Hinman, the creative director; and Sean Dennison, the Chicago clubs' proprietor. (A quick disclosure: I'm a paying member. I've never worked for Switchyards, and nobody paid for this piece.)
I walked away with a great example of an idea I've been circling with clients for years — the best brands are worlds. Switchyards has a great-looking brand, and on top of that it has built a rich world. This article is about what that means, why it works, and how you can do it too, whether you own a brand or design brands for others.
What I mean by a "brand world"
When most people say "brand," they mean the visual identity: the logo, the colors, the fonts, etc. Those things matter a lot. They're how people recognize you, and Switchyards is a good example of this too. But the brands people fall in love with go deeper. They add layers, time, and depth. They carry meaning that rewards you for paying attention. And they make careful choices about when to add something and when to leave it out.
Here's the definition I'll use:
A brand world is when a company takes you out of the real world and into their world.
Why people love brand worlds
A brand world takes you out of your everyday for a minute. Brandon described it through theater and movies. “One of my favorite feelings in art across the board is to forget that I’m in a body,” he told me. "Then the lights come up and you remember you're just a guy in a theater who paid $14 for a show." A good brand world gives you a version of that.
It also leaves room for discovery, and people love to discover things. The restaurant nobody has heard of yet. The band nobody’s talking about. The little easter egg that was only ever meant to be stumbled upon. When we find something on our own, it feels like ours, and we can’t wait to show someone.
Switchyards leans into this. You won’t see big ad campaigns or press releases, and some clubs are hard to find even when you have the address. They let people walk in, experience it for themselves, and spread the word. Michael says there’s “no better sensation than bringing a friend” and hearing, “Dude, what is this place? How did you know about it?” I love bringing people here, myself.
That’s why it’s worth building a brand world of your own. Give people something worth finding, and they’ll do the talking for you.
To build a world takes vision, creativity, people, and rules. But you don't need a physical space to do this. Think of it as a metaphorical world. A product company has packaging, inserts, instructions, and the moment a box gets opened. A service business has proposals, invoices, onboarding emails, and the way the phone gets answered.
Every business has moments where a customer meets it, opportunities to bring them in. The question is whether those moments feel like they belong to the same place; whether the ecosystem feels immersive or transactional; and whether it aligns with the identity, story, and values of the people behind it.
Here are six actionable principles that will help you build your own brand world:
1 — Start with the world you want to live in
Tacked to a wall at Switchyards is a torn card titled "We Invented This Damn Thing." Two lines from it sum up the whole company:
There was something we wanted that didn't exist in the world. So, we made it.
Michael wanted the best parts of coffee shops, libraries, and hotel lobbies under one roof. "I can only pour my life into a product I would use myself," he told me. He's member number one. "We weren't trying to do anything clever. We were just putting out locations we'd want to work in." That brief is simple enough that every later decision can be checked against it: "Would I want to work here?"
How you can do it: Before you design anything, write down ideas about the world you want. What places do you love spending time in? Who has treated you so well you still talk about it? A short list is enough to start. An architect might describe a world where nature intertwines with built forms. A beverage brand might describe an imaginary world where everything lives under water. You don't need it all figured out. Good collaborators just need somewhere to begin.
2 — Get the look right, then break it a little
Visual identity plays a huge role at Switchyards, and it took time to get there. Michael designed the first club himself. In his words, "Switchyards number one had 11 out of 10 soul, probably a four out of 10 actual design." The soul carried it until Brandon arrived and brought the craft.
What they built is unusual. A classic identity system gives you one logo, two typefaces, a strict palette, and rules for everything. That consistency is the baseline. Switchyards, with a team skilled enough to pull it off, breaks its own rules on purpose. Instead of one logo, there are many, as if dozens of hands have touched the materials over the years. It reminds me of a neighborhood auto mechanic where every sign is a little different. The work can break rules and be on-brand at the same time. That's incredibly hard to do, and just as hard to copy.
How you can do it: Earn the right to flex. Build a strong core first (type, color, voice) and then branch out over time. A restaurant group could create a handful of maker marks to accompany their primary logo to stamp on the bottom of plates. A coffee brand could write the brand name 100 times, scan them in, and use a slightly different mark for each package. Build the system, then find ways to break it a little.
3 — Add layers, humor, and meaning
This is where Switchyards really separates itself. There's a small metallic label on the side of the coffee machine that looks like a manufacturer stamped it in the 1950s: "Property of Switchyards, U.S.A. Provided For Official Use & Application. Switchyards Equip. Dept., Neighborhood Work Clubs of America. #228-E." Most people will never notice it. They made it anyway.
The same hidden idea shows up on the bookshelves. Every book carries a small tasteful “Property of Switchyards” label to keep books from wandering off. Open the cover and there’s a blind emboss on the first page, a raised mark you can only feel with your fingertips. Nobody needs it, and most members will never notice it. But for those who do notice, it adds immeasurable brand depth.
The Neighborhood Work Clubs of America doesn't exist outside Switchyards. It's a governing body they invented, modeled on the civic clubs of the '40s and '50s, with its own logo, stickers, and banners. "Honestly, Kyle, it's us fooling around," Michael said, laughing that they're charter members because they made it up. The newest film on the coffee machine screen is a fake '90s-style infomercial for an Italian vacation, ending with a real phone number, 1-850-WRK-CLUB.
The layers build to a feeling Michael describes perfectly: "Has this place been open for 55 years and I just didn't know about it?" Brandon's advice is:
"Let at least one of your obsessions come through, even if it's only picked up by your hardest core regulars. People want something you care about."
How you can do it: Find the places nobody expects you to care about and put something there. A skincare brand could print a short, funny note on the inside of the box lid. A law firm could write an out-of-office reply that people forward to friends. Humor works best as a wink to the people paying attention. You don't need everyone to get it, and you're not looking for lols, you're looking for ahhs.
4 — Scale generosity
Brandon came to Switchyards by way of theater and about a decade as a private chef, and he gave me the simplest definition of hospitality I've ever heard. "Every time you go out to a bar, a restaurant, any sort of space, we do this quick little calculation as we leave the door, and it's simply this: Did I get more than I gave?" If the answer is yes, you come back. He filters every decision through one question:
"What are the things that we can do that we didn't have to do, but we did anyway?"
Being open 24 hours is another version of that. Most members will never use Switchyards at 3 a.m., but they can if they want to, and that's what matters. Brandon talks a lot about the hotel pool when you're on a business trip for one night. If someone says, "We have a saltwater pool on the roof and this key gets you access whenever you want to go," it doesn't matter that you’re not going to use the pool. They just created value because you have have access to something you didn't know about, and we like to know it's there.
Sean talks about generosity the same way. "We are generous letting members bring guests. We want everyone to experience Switchyards. We are generous by always being open 24/7, and, maybe most importantly, we are generous with unlimited delicious local coffee." When Chicago grew from one club to three, the price stayed the same. Some afternoons Sean walks the floor with a pot of coffee and tops everyone off, like an old diner. I've never seen that happen in coworking.
None of these gestures sell a membership on it's own. Together, they make people feel taken care of. It lands differently, and that's what people tell their friends about.
How you can do it: Run Brandon's calculation on your own business. A bike company could include the one tool you'll need after your tune-up. A photographer could give customers an 8-page newspaper featuring their favorite work as a thank you. Hand someone a beverage as soon as they walk in the door. Something small, unexpected, and given freely goes a long way.
5 — Reduce to what matters
On the surface, Switchyards looks maximal. Look closer and it's one of the most disciplined brands I've seen.
There's one snack, a Stroopwafel, and you can take as many as you want. Light roast, dark roast, and decaf. The bathrooms always play local talk radio. The music volume changes from room to room. The front of house is for talking, the middle is semi-quiet, and the back is for heads-down focus. The lighting is tuned for 10 p.m., because "peak cozy, peak warmth, peak ooh is for 10 p.m.," as Brandon put it. Get the room right at night and it looks great at 2 p.m. with daylight added.
"It's hard to do less things," Brandon said. He has a line the team has always loved: "Some of the stickiest places are the ones that are defined as much by what you can't do there as by what you can." Sean put it even shorter. "Do one thing best-in-the-world. We are here for members to get work done. We won't be distracted."
Michael calls this putting your calories in the right place. Too many founders, he said, "spend all their best calories just opening on day one," and run out right before things get magical.
"They blew the budget on the sign but forgot the welcome mat."
How you can do it: If your brand doesn't feel like a world yet, you might be doing too much. Scale some things back and move the time and money you saved into some fun layers. And even when you give generously, people will always ask for something different. But draw a line. Brandon compares the Stroopwafel to the Biscoff cookie on a Delta flight: you're not there for a meal, and asking for Oreos misses the point. "It's not about that," he said. "We're not serving you a sandwich. We have had to focus, but we still aim for generous." So be selective about how many things you offer, and generous with the ones you do.
6 — Tend the details
Michael's father was born in Naples, and a few Italian words have seeped into the Switchyards vocabulary. One has become a creed: dettagli e pulizia. Details and cleanliness.
"We have to get the details right, keep them up, and if we don't, we lose as a business."
Michael told me it's one of the team's core values, with its own Slack channel where they track how well they nailed it or didn't. It started with a challenge. Michael once heard the founder of Zingerman's, the Ann Arbor deli, say that a business's second location is rarely better than its first. He took it personally. "That inspired me to make sure our second Switchyards was better than our first, our seventh better than our third, and so on." The team's mantra became: every location is the best one yet.
How you can do it: Treat launch day as the starting line. A product brand can improve on something didn't didn't quite work. A service firm can revise its onboarding guide after every client, so the tenth client gets a better experience than the first. Involve the team in collecting wins and things to improve next time. It's important for leadership to foster an attitude of getting the details right and learning from mistakes.
The world, put together
Does the world need another coworking company? Probably not, and I suspect Michael, Brandon, and Sean would agree. What people want is something that takes them outside their normal lives. Something they can discover on their own and are a little excited to tell a friend about.
A brand world doesn’t require a Soho House budget. Switchyards gives it to people for $129 a month, a price that Brandon calls a design decision. It requires a clear picture of the world you want, a strong look, layers worth discovering, real generosity, the discipline to leave things out, and the patience to keep tending all of it. Most of that costs more attention than money.
So the next time you sit down to work on your brand, or a client’s, set the logo aside for a minute. Picture someone stepping into what you’ve made. What world are they walking into? And when they leave, did they get more than they gave?
Kyle Eertmoed is the founder of Eertmoed Studio. Subscribe to get The Latest articles sent right to your inbox.
