Why your branding is broken and why a rebrand won’t fix it.

I’ve been in the design world for over 15 years, which is both impressive and boring. I started in UX and UI—designing mobile apps, web apps, big functional systems. Everything I did had to be grounded in how a person would actually use it…and if it didn’t work, it didn’t ship. If it looked good but confused people, it was trash.

The brand identity world does not operate on the same rules.

No, the branding world is obsessed with the end customer, with questions like: What will attract them? What will speak to them? What will "pop" out at them and slap them in the face?

It doesn’t matter how complicated or combersome it is to create brand assets and maintain the brand, as long as it’s attracting that end customer.

The who, what, where, when and why are all covered throughout the branding process and final presentation.

But you know what isn’t covered?

The How.

You know who isn’t factored into the equation?

You.

The person or team who will be handed a logo, a color palette, a handful of fonts, and a link to a glossy PDF with some phrases like “always center the logo on white space to represent clarity” or “use photography that evokes growth and possibility,” and then… good luck!

I’ve been hired by companies after they finished a rebrand, multiple times. Like, literally weeks after the big brand reveal. I was brought on as a full time employee with design as the primary role, because the team had no idea what to do with the brand they just paid (tens of) thousands for.

These were not small teams or online biz owners. These were established businesses, 60+ employees deep. 60 employees and it was time for them to make the committment to hire a full time designer, for the first time. And what prompted that need? A rebrand.

Then in 2019, I started working with small businesses and solopreneurs—aka the people with no extra time, no extra hands, no in-house team. And yet they are still called to hire branding studios just like those established companies are. And they do.

And they don’t “just get a logo” because they are told that’s a waste of money. They won’t know what to do with it. They need more, so it’s easier and cohesive and consistent. They need the full branding package so they get a brand book. That brand book will be their guiding light king after the brand designer is gone.

So that’s what they do! They get the full branding package for 3…4….6 thousand dollars and get their beautiful brand book.

And after all that time everything and sparkly presentations… just a few days or weeks later they find that they were still stuck. Still struggling to make shit look good. Still spending hours in Canva pushing things around and not understanding why they can't "do this."

Sound familiar? It's not your fault. You've been set up to fail.

Because these branding packages with logos, colors, fonts all wrapped up in a pretty brand book? It isn’t built for you. They are made by designers, FOR designers. They are not made for the business owner who’s just trying to send a damn proposal.

And don’t get me wrong, they’re beautiful. Branding studios do amazing work. The fonts are trendy. The mockups are clean. The moodboards are moodboarding. But none of it means anything if you can’t use it without wanting to scream into a pillow.

A good brand identity isn’t one you have to figure out every time you open Canva. It’s not one that makes you sweat trying to match the energy of your logo. It’s not one that you feel bad about “not using properly.”

If your brand makes you feel guilty? It’s broken.

If you’re afraid to post because your brand “isn’t polished enough”? Broken.

If you’ve paid for branding and still don’t know how to design a presentation without Googling “presentation examples”? Broken.

This is coming from someone who has literally spent a year inside a company building a real, usable brand system. That’s how long it took. I was working (at least) 20 hours a week on branding tasks, for 12 months, inside a hospital system with 300 employees. I created over 50 pages of documentation, links to templates, folders of Canva assets, examples of social posts, brochures, flyers, everything. And it _still_ took the full year to get to a point where I could easily delegate it without a lot of intervention.

That’s what it takes to make a truly usable brand. Not a moodboard. Not a logo reveal and a PDF. A YEAR. And a year of someone like me, aka a trained and very experienced designer, focusing a lot of time into.

So if you’re sitting there thinking, “Why is this so hard for me? Why can’t I just _use_ my brand like a normal person?”—babe, you were set up. The branding industry is still operating like it’s the Mad Men era and once the brand is presented, you’ll have an agency of designers there to execute it. It was never designed for you.

But I see you. I’ve been you. Hell, I’ve been the designer _burning out_ trying to design for you. And I’m here to say what most people won’t:

Your brand isn’t bad.

It’s just not built to be used by you.

And it’s not your fault.

Now, this is the part where you’d expect me to say “you need a rebrand.”

But no. NO!!!!!!

You don’t need a rebrand.

You need a reset. You need a version of your brand that’s stripped down, usable, human, and built around the way you actually work.

You need a system that works for _you_, not just the people looking at it.

And that’s what I’m going to help you build.

So if you’re tired of pretending your branding is working when really you’re hacking together posts and crying into your laptop—cool. Me too. Let’s burn it down and start over the smart way.

The best place to start? My free Thoughtless Brand Starter Pack. Where I’ll walk you through how to run your current brand through the IDGAF Framework, which uses minimalism and design principles to make your brand feel so easy it’s thoughtless.

Get the starter pack