Dan Alves turned lawsuits and controversies into a $250k raise for Comunal App Apparel Digital

The Brand Identity: Dan Alves has been sued by Adobe, accused of blasphemy and might have designed one of the most debated logos of the decade. The Los Angeles-based designer has built a career on provocation and total creative control – from selling over 25,000 mockups through his $5 marketplace Mokk, to opening Comunal, a members’ dining experience in New York City. His philosophy emerged from years of designing merch graphics that got bottlenecked by poor client decisions: ugly blanks, bad printing, low-conversion websites.

Comunal represents that thinking at its most ambitious: a physical space designed to feel like an artificial legacy brand, 100 years old from day one. The concierge team has been trained to hang up on callers mid-conversation – a deliberate friction point designed to give guests something to bond over. In our chat, Alves discusses why accessibility can be a luxury, how designers manipulate perception, and what he learned renovating his apartment as a test run. TBI Dan, how are you doing? DA Awesome. TBI Between the X logo, album covers and now a dining experience – your work spans wildly different outputs.

What’s the through-line in how you approach design? DA Right now, I'm approaching every project by making the most immersive experience you can imagine. It almost sort of comes as an act of protest of the work I did when I was younger. I have a long history of designing merch for what feels like every artist ever, and what feels like every person in the content creator space during the COVID times. During those times, I was in high school, I was still so young. I only had creative control for just a graphic.

All of my creative input could have only been applied to a graphic on a t-shirt. During this time, someone told me sort of this idea that I should be in control of the blanks and the distribution. At the time, it seemed crazy because, you know, I was very young and sort of just following the industry standard, I guess. The standard was just that everyone does their job of designing graphics and gets paid, and someone else takes over other parts of the project. I don’t even have the best relationship with clothing design at this point anymore. I think it’s so far beyond oversaturated. It’s beyond saving. At least at this time.

It’s been very commoditised; it seems like everyone is designing merch graphics. I’m at this point where, at least while I’m young, I’m constantly running around to find the new niche that no one else has figured out. It’s a fun race, and I like the competitive nature. I’ve been building a lot of really interesting interactive web apps for many clients, websites, whatever. At least commercially, right now this is my niche. I have full control over everything, from designing these things, but also part of the development, and then also sort of building the brand around it.

So really the ideal project for me is one where every single aspect I’m covering all grounds. I’ll get a budget for a job, and that includes my work, but also includes every possible touch point for a brand ever. There were situations back in the merch days, I would have the best graphic ever, but, you know, it went on the worst blank, with the worst printing, and it went on the ugliest website that was designed to have the lowest conversion rate possible. Right now in my career, anything that’s designed by me, it should see its full potential all the way through.

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The article discusses an innovative branding strategy that challenges traditional norms and has resulted in significant financial success, making it highly relevant and impactful for brand strategy professionals.