the brand designer needs a rebrand

While writing and rewriting lots of sales copy over the last months, I realized something embarrassing: my own brand hasn’t felt quite right for a while.

It still works. It still converts. I still get tons of compliments on it! But Swail Studio in her current form is not aligned with who I’ve become over the last four years or where I want to go. 

I pieced together this brand for my past self: a strategic designer exhausted with freelancing for agencies that wouldn’t let me present my own work. 

Now, after years of refining exactly what I’m best at and with new goals on the horizon, I’ve become something more: a psychic brand director for rebels and innovators who need their wild visions translated into luxury visuals. 

I see this same drift happen inside my clients’ businesses all the time. 

They’ve built a brand and business that works well enough by following best practices, mirroring what their clients’ brands look like, assuming that visual palatability is the safe bet to get people on board with their industry overhaul… but somewhere along the way, the fire they started with dims. Their full selves get left behind somewhere along the way. 

When they come to me, they are more successful than ever, but their visuals still look like templates — and there’s an obvious inner disconnect that’s beginning to undermine how they want to be seen.

If you’re already here, I probably don’t have to tell you that “proven-to-convert” branding is a gilded cage. It gives you safety and structure, but it rarely gives you … YOU, in your full glory.  

At the beginning of Swail Studio, I had a bone to pick with “luxury” design. My one-liner as a freelancer was “I make things look expensive.” With expensive defined as... boring. Beige. “Blanding” is a term that was popularized around this time. I was out of touch with what initially lit me up about design.  

So, I swung all the way to the other side of the pendulum: all the darkness, texture, wacky colors and controlled chaos that my dark little repressed-artist heart desired. 

As I’ve learned to harmonize both sides of my taste and training — the painter with the minimalist, the experimenter with the craftswoman — my style has evolved, and it’s time that my own brand reflected it. 

It gives me so much joy to bring the clarity of color and form that I see in my mind while speaking to a client into the real world through the lens of craft, detail, and intentionality of true luxury into something fully true to them. 

It feels like a BIG claim to make, but I can already see your full brand in one session. One solid conversation. The concept, the colors, the texture, the feel. 

That’s my gift: translation of what’s already there, not construction from traditional marketing frameworks or color psychology or your birth chart. (You’ve already worn those out, right?) 

You don’t need to beat around the bush of being “you” in your business. You already are. I just help you share you, as you truly are, with everyone else ready to be a part of your vision (and rightly deter those who aren't.)

So, it’s time that I put myself through my own process that I’ve perfected over the past few years — and I’m bringing you along with me. 

Before you ask: the name “Swail Studio” isn’t changing. The red and black will still be there. I just won’t be hiding behind the quick logo I slapped together a few years ago and never changed. (Yes, it happened to ME. UGH.)

I’m bringing in more of my full self — to match the fullness of self that my best, boldest, too-much clients bring. And hopefully you’ll be inspired to do the same. 

If there are any particular details you'd like me to demystify about my process, email me. I’ll do my best to share!