Broadbent Studio

"Brand strategy" gets thrown around a lot. So let me tell you what it actually means in plain terms.

It's the thinking you do before anything gets designed.

It's answering questions like:

👉Who are you actually trying to reach, and what does she need to feel before she'll trust you enough to book?
👉What makes your practice different from the one down the street, in a way that has nothing to do with your services list?
👉What do you want someone to walk away thinking after they spend five minutes on your website?

Without answers to those questions, design is just decoration. It might look polished. It will probably fall flat in the real world.

With those answers, every decision — your colours, your fonts, the first sentence on your homepage, the image you choose for your business card — is working toward the same goal. Making the right person feel like they've found exactly who they were looking for.

That strategy layer is built into every project before a single design decision gets made. It's called the Diamond Blueprint, and it's the reason the work lasts.

Link in bio if you want to know what that process looks like for your practice.

It's common to start with whatever you can pull together quickly.

A logo made in Canva. A free website template. Colours that felt fine at the time.

And for a while, it works. Your skills carry you, and your clients come through referrals.

But there's a moment where the gap between how good you are and how you look online starts to show up in ways you can feel.

You hesitate before handing your card to someone.

You don't share your website link as confidently as you share your work.
photo was exactly there when we first talked. A talented photographer, busy, doing work she was proud of and a visual presence that didn't come close to reflecting any of it.

That gap is what we've been working to close together over the last few weeks. More on what we built coming up!

It's common to skip the strategy conversation.

Most designers jump straight to visuals because that's what clients are excited about. What you end up with are beautiful things that don't work. Polished. Flat in the real world. The problem was never the design. A solution got built before anyone understood the problem.

That gap is exactly why I work the way I do.

For health and wellness practitioners especially, the stakes are real. Most can't use client testimonials due to regulatory restrictions. So the brand has to carry that entire weight. The logo, the website, the words. They are the testimonial. That responsibility demands understanding the person behind the practice before a single design element is touched.

I had the honour of sitting down with to talk about what it actually looks like to build a brand that holds up over five to ten years, why visibility is one of the most overlooked equity issues in my industry, and why credentials are the floor, not the ceiling.

If you work in a high-trust field and your brand isn't doing the work it should be, this one's for you.

Read the full interview here: https://www.brainzmagazine.com/post/strategic-branding-for-high-trust-professionals-an-interview-with-creative-director-rachel-simms

Before I design anything, I ask a lot of questions.

What made you choose this field? Who is the patient you think about when you are designing a new programme? What do your best clients say about you that you would never say about yourself?

Those conversations are not warm-up. They are the work. They are where the brand actually comes from.

I call this the Diamond Blueprint, and it is the foundation of everything we build at Broadbent Studio. The reason it matters is simple: you cannot design something that feels genuinely like someone until you actually understand them.

The practitioners who have been through it describe it as the first time someone really listened to what they were trying to build, not just what they needed to put on a website.

That is the starting point for every Spark Package.

Link in bio to book your free consultation.

Something I think about a lot when I am working on a brand.

This logo needs to still make sense in ten years.

Not because the design will be identical. It will evolve. But the foundation, the feeling, the clarity about who this practitioner is and who they serve, that needs to be built to last.

I see a lot of practitioners who have rebranded three times in five years. Each time, because the last brand stopped fitting. Each time, because the work started with aesthetics instead of starting with strategy.

When we build a brand by genuinely understanding the person behind it, by getting inside their head and understanding where they have been and where they are going, it does not need to be replaced every two years. It grows with them. The logo that launches the practice is still the one on the door when they hire their second associate.

That longevity is not an accident. It is what happens when the strategy comes first.

If you are thinking about a rebrand, I would love to talk about what building it to last actually looks like.

Link in bio to book a free consult call.

I want to talk about something that changed how I think about brand design.

The goal is not a beautiful website.

The goal is that by the time someone picks up the phone to call you, they already feel like they know you. They have already decided you are the right fit. They are not calling to find out if you can help them. They are calling to work out the logistics.

That is what a brand built on genuine clarity and personality does. It does the relationship-building before you are in the room. It makes the first conversation feel like the second one.

For health practitioners who are spending hours every week on discovery calls that go nowhere, this is not a small thing. It is the difference between a practice that feels like a grind and one that feels like it is working the way it should.

That is what we are building together in the Spark Package. Link in bio.

I had a discovery session last month that I keep thinking about.

The practitioner came in thinking she needed a new logo. Within the first twenty minutes, I realized what she actually needed was permission.

Permission to claim the niche she had been quietly building toward for three years.

Permission to say, clearly and out loud, who she was for and who she was not.

Permission to stop trying to appeal to everyone and start speaking directly to the one person she does her best work with.

The brand we built together did that. It was not just a logo. It was the beginning of a new chapter for her practice.

That is what happens when the strategy comes first. The design does not just represent your business. It births a new version of it.

If that sounds like what you have been waiting for, link in bio to book a call.

Here is something I believe that most designers do not talk about.

Your brand should have Easter eggs in it.

Not hidden logos or clever tricks. I mean, little pieces of you. Your sense of humour. The thing you always say to clients in the first session. The reason you chose this field in the first place. The values you would never compromise on.

When those things are woven into the design, something shifts. You stop seeing the brand as something separate from you and start feeling connected to it. You want to share it. You get excited when you see it next to other logos at an event.

That is not a coincidence. That is what happens when a brand is actually built around the person behind it.

The Spark Package starts with a deep discovery process for exactly this reason. We get into who you are before we touch a single design element.

Link in bio if you want a brand that actually feels like you - book a free consult call.

Can I talk directly to the woman who has had a rebrand on her to-do list for the last two years?

The one who tells herself she will do it when things slow down, when she has saved a bit more, when she feels ready.

The one who has refreshed her own website at least a dozen times wishing something felt different about it.

I see you. And I want to tell you something from someone who has sat across from a lot of women exactly where you are.

The waiting does not make it easier.

What makes it easier is doing it with someone who actually gets what you have built and where you are trying to go.

Someone who will ask you the right questions before touching a single design element.

Someone who is going to build you something you will still be proud of in ten years.

That is what I do.

Every project starts with a deep strategy session before anything visual happens.

The brand we build together is rooted in who you actually are, not a template someone dressed up to look like you.

If you have been thinking about this, now is a genuinely good time to reach out. I keep my client list intentionally small, so every project gets real attention.

Link in bio to chat about what you’ve been building.