I help one founder per quarter ship a real brand system — identity, voice, content patterns — without the overhead of hiring a brand team. Eight weeks. Clear scope. Hand it off and your operators can run it.
Most "brand engagements" produce a 60-page PDF nobody opens. I produce a system your operators actually use — and the deck is the smallest part of it.
Wordmark, color, type, and the four or five visual moves that make your brand recognizable in a 600-pixel feed thumbnail. Built so a junior designer on your team can extend it without breaking it.
Twenty real sentences your team can copy, modify, and ship. Not principles like "be human." Specific patterns like "we always open with the problem, not the product." With examples your team can point to in a draft.
Templates for the five recurring formats you actually publish (landing pages, blog posts, customer announcements, hiring posts, product updates). Built in your CMS, not as PDFs. So your team can ship in the system on day one.
One client at a time. Eight weeks. Flat fee, quoted in the proposal. No retainer. No "ongoing creative direction." The handoff is the product.
You leave the engagement with a brand system your operators can run, a one-page playbook on how to use it, and my number for two free 30-minute follow-ups in the first six months after handoff if something gets weird.
I'm not your brand team. I'm the person who helps you ship a brand system at the stage where hiring a brand team is premature but doing nothing is starting to hurt.
If you have a brand director, a creative director, or a full design team in-house, I am the wrong person for that engagement. I will refer you to firms that do that work well.
"The shape of brand work I do well is: founder-led, second-act-of-the-company, the brand needs to be a system the operators can run without me."
Here's what tends to be true of my best engagements: the company is Series A or Series B, has 20–80 people, has a real product and real customers, and is at the point where the "founder-Slack-DMed-the-Figma-file" brand model has stopped scaling. The founder is willing to sit in the room for the work. The operators are smart enough to extend the system after I leave.
Here's what is usually true of engagements I have turned down: the company is pre-product, the brand work is meant to substitute for traction, or the founder wants a brand engagement but is not willing to be in the room. None of those are wrong; they are just not the shape of work I do well.
Two-day kickoff sprint with you and three operators. I read every customer call and content piece from the last 90 days. We end with one document: a short, opinionated read on what your brand currently is — including the parts you don't love.
Two distinct identity directions — neither presented as the safer one. We pick one in a 90-minute working session. Color, type, wordmark, and the four visual moves that define how the brand extends.
Twenty sentences in your voice, drafted from real source material. Five recurring content templates built in your CMS. A one-page playbook your operators can post above their desk.
Final identity files, the CMS templates installed and tested, the playbook printed, and a 90-minute operator-training session with your team. Two free 30-minute follow-up calls reserved in the next six months if you hit something weird.
Once the engagement ends, I'm out of the day-to-day. The system is built to be extended by your team. If you hire me back for a second engagement later, that's a new engagement, not a renewal.
If all you need is a wordmark, the engagement is more than you need. I'd rather point you to a freelance designer than charge you for a system you won't use.
If you haven't shipped anything customers have paid for yet, your brand needs to wait until you have. I will tell you so on the first call.
I am one person. There are no associates and no junior designers on the engagement. You work with me directly through ship.
If we're a fit, the fastest path is a short email. Tell me what you're working on, where you are in the company arc, and what's making you think about brand right now. I read every one and reply within three business days.
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