Nemesis is a brand consultancy and creative studio working across strategy, language and creative direction.
Our work is deeply culturally informed and uniquely cross-disciplinary. We help our clients cut through to audiences in a crowded landscape with power, style, and clarity.
Our clients range from emerging technology protocols to established consumer and luxury brands. We are based in Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York.
Get in touch at info@nemesis.global
Brand Strategy
Articulating the who, what, how and why at the heart of the brand. Distilling vision and values. Positioning the brand in its competitive landscape and the world at large.
Language and Communication
Developing key brand narratives, tone of voice, taglines and a system of codes and best practices for communication and marketing. Product naming and naming systems.
Creative Direction
High level creative direction across different mediums: graphic design, UX, art direction, sound and more. Execution of design strategies in collaboration with a pool of world class creative talent.
Cultural Research
Provocative, actionable research on vectors of change across consumer behavior, cultural codes, communication and more.
Get in touch at info@nemesis.global to see what we can do for you.
Art Basel, Baggu, Buffy, Delv, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, MTV, Nike, Nina Protocol, Off-White, Open, PAN, Red Bull Arts, Rimowa, Samara, Sector Finance, The Serpentine, Sub, Supreme, Urbit / Tlon, True Religion, Virgil Abloh, Yearn DAO.
Emily Segal is a Los Angeles -based brand strategist and founding partner of Nemesis.
Previously she co-founded the trend forecasting group K-HOLE, the collective best known for coining the term normcore. K-HOLE’s free PDF trend reports on the nature of millennial change were downloaded half a million times and their work has been presented at galleries and museums internationally, including the Serpentine Gallery and MoMA PS1. Vogue called them “pop culture’s favorite trend forecasters.”
As an internationally recognized expert on brands and cultural change, she was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business and served as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Consumer Industries. Emily’s first novel, Mercury Retrograde, was published in 2020 and was a New York Times New and Noteworthy book. She also is also the founder of Deluge Books, an experimental literary press, with collaborators in New York and Los Angeles. Her essays and interviews have appeared in the Guardian, Frieze, Dazed, 032c and many other publications.
Martti Kalliala is a strategist and designer, originally educated as an architect and founding partner of Nemesis. He is half of the acclaimed electronic music duo Amnesia Scanner.
He’s the author of many essays on culture, technology, and design, published in Harvard Design Magazine, Kaleidoscope, Flash Art and others. In a previous life he worked for OMA in Rotterdam.
The next workshop is coming up April 12th, 19th, and 26th at 9am PDT / 12pm EDT (with video replay). Sign up here.
Introducing Autonomous Strategy
It’s a strange time to be a knowledge worker (or strategist, or creative). It feels like world of information has fundamentally changed overnight, and the rate of change only appears to be accelerating. Everyday our feeds announce that strategists and creatives are going to be replaced en masse, lose their jobs, or face reduced earning power because of the latest advancements in AI. At the same time, it seems we’re all about to be drowned in increasingly sophisticated slop, devaluing the very thing we both make and are experts in navigating: culture.
In the midst of all this, we realized it’s actually the best possible time to get down to the core of what strategy is and can be under volatile conditions. To examine how best to maintain – and increase – personal agency. To review how to stay confident in navigating an uncertain, constantly shifting environment. To think through how to get access to the right tools, and the right approach for using them.
More and more, this moment reminds us of why we started Nemesis in the first place: how the independent creative side of your practice can feed strategic work and vice versa. We invite you to join us in thinking through how we want to produce, assemble, and consume knowledge at the cusp of AGI.
This is for you if you are a…
…strategist
…creative
…strategist with a creative practice
…brand professional
…cultural analyst
…doing strategy for your own project or product
…interested in the intersection of brands, strategy, culture and tech
Who we are:
Emily Segal and Martti Kalliala, the founders of Nemesis, which the New Yorker called an “’alternative’ consultancy” (scare quotes noted). We’ve worked with many iconic brands doing strategy, trend forecasting, and design consulting. We’ve also initiated many independent projects, separately and together – K-HOLE, Deluge, KNOTS, Amnesia Scanner, and SCAMMER. We’ve also taught and lectured at the Rietveld Academie, Columbia Architecture School, the Yale School of Art, the Yale School of Management, Harvard GSD, Design Academy Eindhoven and others.
Topics the workshop will cover:
– Strategy in uncertain times – what is strategy? what are brands? how should strategic or branding methods change or adjust in this era?
– Relevant Nemesis strategy methods
– AI for strategy: which tools (AI and otherwise) apply to this work and how best to approach them?
– Approaches for tuning into intuition and expanded consciousness as part of creative and strategic methods
What you get:
Three live workshop sessions on Zoom, 75 minutes each
Saturdays at 9am PDT / 12pm EDT
April 12, April 19, April 26
Replay video shared after each live session
$289 workshop fee
$249 special early bird rate if you sign up before April 7
Paid Substack subscribers get the early bird rate at any point. If you’re signing up during the regular fee period send us an email at info@nemesis.global and we’ll get you sorted out
No refunds after workshop begins
If you have any other questions, write to us at info@nemesis.global
In addition to live sessions, you get:
Nemesis syllabus and strategy resources
Writing prompts
Creative Exercises
Workshop Are.na channels
What people have said about Autonomous Strategy…
“Highly effective at both giving me an adaptable framework to think about strategy, and at actually changing and improving my personal creative habits.”
“I learned several things about AI strategy that I immediately implemented in my work.”
“A fun and dense reminder of the meaning of strategy in times when real possibilities seem tactical only.”
“10/10 amazing.”
“Insightful, inspiring, innovative, informal and relatable.”
“Zero BS, full-on heart. A joy through and through.”
“Amazing! I was looking for something to help with our rebrand direction and this was perfect.”
“I loved the workshop. It was both inspiring and made me realize again why I love strategy so much. I’ve definitely started using some of the tools and what was discussed in my work.”
“Emily is a great speaker who provided us with some of her tools and processes while remarking they should serve a bigger purpose and not the other way around.”
“I’m currently working on a new position and have to build a new Strategy framework for my agency. This worshop gave me the tools to create a new organizing culture.”
“This workshop has been everything I had hoped for and much more. It’s been educational, inspiring, and also somewhat alarming in the sense that we are blazing into a new generation of technology and language that we may not be applying enough attention to. The unique approach to utilizing these new tools has really helped open my eyes.”
“I didn’t expect the rich creative learning experience that I got in the relatively short time we had, and it’s a very adult kind of creative experience, one about intellectual rigor and commerce as much as curiosity and expression. Made me feel significantly less cynical.”
“Seeing the amount of people engaged in this workshop was so cool. I loved the energy and focus that every person contributed.”
“Money well spent :)”