There's a project every organization has and nobody wants to start. Starting means choosing one problem over five others, spending money you're not sure you can justify, and hoping you've picked the thing that will actually make a difference. Sound familiar? The website has been "good enough" for three years. The donation form works, technically, if you have the patience of someone who really, really wants to give you money. The brand works for funders but it doesn’t speak to your community....
30 days ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, You know that moment in school when the teacher is looking to call on someone and you quickly avert your eyes? In the social sector, design work has a way of looking like it fell on the desk of whoever didn't look away in time. They weren't quite prepared, and their brain definitely wants to be somewhere else. Still, the need is real, the deadline is looming, the tools to make it happen exist, and someone is close enough to it to push some pixels around. So something gets made,...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Once, I was handed a slide deck. A marketer at an agency had built it in Canva as reference material for the brand audit package I was putting together. It was tidy enough. It also could have belonged to anyone, and in a way it did. Even though the colours had been swapped out, the fonts adjusted, the content dropped in, something was missing. The thinking that makes design actually work for a specific organization, a specific community, a specific message, wasn't there. It...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Last month I told you I changed my business name at the worst possible time: mid-rebuild, website unfinished, visual identity unsorted. The timing was terrible. I did it anyway, because waiting for perfect conditions is how you stay stuck forever. And for the past six months, every three weeks, I've been seeing a TMJ specialist. Every visit, I fill out the same intake form. Every visit, the hygienist asks about my pain levels, my sleep, my mood… all of which I had just written...
6 months ago • 4 min read
Hi, You may have noticed the newsletter looks a little different this time. That's because I changed my business name sort of impulsively, but not at all, really. Mid-rebuild. Website still unfinished. Visual identity nowhere close to sorted, and feeling very exposed right now (!!). My mentor had told me it didn't matter that much… I could have listened. Except… I'd spent a year doing marketing backflips to make an ill-fitting name work, and I couldn't operate under that cognitive and...
7 months ago • 3 min read
Who's really paying for the fixes you keep postponing? I was reviewing a donation flow for an organization doing genuinely important work when I discovered who was really paying for the fixes they'd been postponing. Imagine yourself in this donor's position: would you jump through all the hoops, or would you give up instead? The problems weren't huge individually, just default settings and assumptions no one questioned. Compounded, they turned what should have been simple into something...
7 months ago • 4 min read
Hi, You may have noticed the newsletter looks a little different this time. That's because I changed my business name sort of impulsively, but not at all, really. Mid-rebuild. Website still unfinished. Visual identity nowhere close to sorted, and feeling very exposed right now (!!). My mentor had told me it didn't matter that much… I could have listened. Except… I'd spent a year doing marketing backflips to make an ill-fitting name work, and I couldn't operate under that cognitive and...
7 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, In almost every discovery call I end up saying the same thing, giving this same sort of reassurance, usually when they're apologizing for their website or their inconsistent brand or whatever marketing piece they feel guilty about. The thing I say: You're the expert in your business. I'm the expert at *this.(*When I say "this", dear reader, picture me gesturing towards the messy places between your marketing intentions and what lands with your people. The stuff that's hidden below...
9 months ago • 3 min read
Hi friend, Most social enterprises I know are juggling twelve priorities and one Google Doc with a truly incomprehensible style sheet. Think you need new software or divine inspiration? Maybe what you need is five quiet minutes to make the things you already use look like they belong to an organization that knows what it's doing. Design is intention made visible. When people see care in the small stuff, they assume it's everywhere else too. That's how visual trust works. A few small acts of...
10 months ago • 2 min read