Lately, I’ve come across quite a few posts from solopreneurs and small business owners talking about their frustrating experiences working with brand designers.
Most people felt stuck or overwhelmed. Designers bombarding them with too many arbitrary choices:
"What colors do you like? Which font speaks to you? Pick a template."
And then came round after round of endless revisions without ever reaching an alignment. Clients felt hopeless, and designers burned out and gave up.
When I first started out, I ran into the exact same challenges and made those very same mistakes. Looking back at my early years, honestly, there are moments I still cringe at. I genuinely regret not being able to deliver the best experience and outcome for some of the clients who trusted me back then.
But those painful missteps are what taught me the hardest lessons—pushing me to rethink my entire process and serve clients far better today.
Seven years ago, I took on a freelance branding project for a personalized skincare business.
Fresh out of school, my skills revolved purely around visual craft and software. Business thinking? I had zero. The client’s brief was deceptively simple: they wanted a rebrand because the current identity didn't look "premium" enough, and they wanted to attract higher-paying clients.
Naive and eager, I took the brief at face value without knowing how to ask the questions that actually mattered:
What does "premium" actually mean to them? How much is "higher-paying"?
What is the real business driver behind this rebrand? What specific outcome are they trying to unlock?
Why did they start this business in the first place? What was the founder's original vision, ambition, or purpose
What core value are they trying to create and deliver to their clients?
Who is their exact audience? Men, women, or both? What age range? What specific skin struggles are they dealing with?
Rebranding—or building any brand identity—cannot just be: "It looks quite cheap right now, I want it to be more high-end."
And then the designer passively follows along, asking what fonts, colors, or styles the client likes.
That is about as superficial as it gets.
Because I didn't dig deeper, I walked into the project with zero real context. No input, no insights, no data. And without data, where was I supposed to pull meaningful ideas from?
My rookie solution is to scroll Pinterest and Behance for fancy-looking brands, cherry-picking aesthetic elements, and stitching them together. The resulting work was fragmented, superficial, and completely lacked depth.
Naturally, both sides fell into a vicious cycle:
On the client's side: They always felt something was "off" or "missing," but couldn't put it into words. They weren't designers, so they couldn't use design terminology—all they knew was that the work didn't capture the spirit of their brand.
On my side: I hit a creative wall. My grasp of their business was so shallow that every time I tried to force-fit "pretty" ideas onto their brand, it felt completely out of place.
We went back and forth endlessly, both exhausted and nowhere near the finish line.
It took years of studying and understanding the business side of a company to finally see things clearly:
To build a great brand identity, you first have to understand the founder’s core motivation. What value are they determined to bring to the table? Who are they genuinely trying to serve?
Even a phrase as common as "higher-paying clients" is completely vague without context:
Who are these people, and what age demographic are they in?
What does "higher-paying" mean in real numbers? $50, $500, or $5,000?
What specific skin problems are they desperately trying to solve?
What emotional state do they want to walk away with after their appointment?
And most importantly: Why would they choose this business over every other option on the market?
What does "luxury" or "premium" even look like to them? Everyone defines luxury differently. Dig a layer deeper, and you often find that what they actually need isn't luxury at all—it might be warmth, clinical credibility, or pure transparency.
Only when you truly grasp the essence of the business and the founder behind it do you have enough insight to translate it into a visual identity that resonates.
Aesthetics are just the surface. Understanding the business context and the people behind it is what makes branding last.
That's why when someone reaches out just asking for a quick logo, I usually say no. A standalone logo alone simply cannot create lasting value for a brand.
I'll dive deeper into that in my next post.
