Blog

Notes on the craft.

Working thoughts on copywriting, branding, 3D and the business of being senior. The personal writing lives in Explorations.

A comparison between consistent 3D product renders and AI-generated versions of the same product, showing how AI subtly changes proportions, labels and details from one image to the next.

3D Product Rendering vs AI: Why Brands Using AI Risk Losing Customer Trust

3D product rendering vs AI: reputable brands risk their customers' trust for a small saving on the advertising budget. What generative AI cannot keep the same.

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Scattered jigsaw puzzle pieces symbolising creative work split across multiple freelancers, illustrating the challenge of bringing separate disciplines together into one coherent brand.

Why Splitting Your Creative Work Across Multiple Freelancers Costs More Than You Think

The hidden cost of splitting creative work across multiple freelancers, and why one multi-disciplinary creative partner gets you coherent work in fewer rounds.

An abstract grid of tiny thumbnails representing a digital marketplace, with only a few highlighted, symbolising how product packaging must stand out instantly on a phone screen.

Quick Commerce Packaging Design: Your Pack Has Half a Second on Blinkit

Packaging design for quick commerce is a different brief. On Blinkit your pack is a 200-pixel thumbnail, seen for half a second by someone scrolling one-handed.

A standalone logo alongside a curated brand identity board of typography, colour and design elements, symbolising that a logo is only one component of a complete brand.

Logo vs Brand Identity: Your Logo Alone Is Not Your Brand

Logo vs brand identity: founders spend three months on the logo, then wonder why the brand feels thin. The most visible decision, and the most overrated.

An open multi-page presentation deck against a blue background, representing the sales document that helps a D2C brand persuade retail buyers and get onto shelves.

The Deck That Gets a D2C Brand Onto Shelves

Your Instagram does not follow you into the buyer's room. To get onto a quick-commerce app or into modern trade, a D2C brand needs a document built to sell, not to admire.

Three replaceable faces placed into a costume template, illustrating how templates can suit many D2C design tasks while custom design is better for foundational brand work.

When a D2C Brand Actually Needs a Designer, and When Canva Is Fine

Half the time a young brand should not hire me. Spending on design you do not need yet is as wasteful as skimping where it matters. Here is the honest line between the two.

Abstract composition of overlapping green, yellow and orange paper shapes representing inconsistent brand identity.

Your Brand Looks Like Five Different Brands, and Your Customer Notices

Open your website, your marketplace listing, your Instagram, your packaging, and your last ad side by side. For most D2C brands, five different companies show up. The fix is not more design.

A desktop monitor running 3D software, showing wireframe mesh views of a sofa from several angles, with a laptop rendering a lamp beside it, under the words 'What is 3D product rendering'

What 3D Product Rendering Actually Is (and When to Use It)

3D product rendering builds your product in software and photographs it there. Here is what that involves, why it now looks like a photograph, and when a brand should reach for it.

A red box marked with a large question mark sitting on stacks of dollar and euro banknotes, beside the words 'What you're paying for when you buy copywriting'

What You're Actually Paying For When You Buy Copywriting

Two hundred words of pack copy can cost more than a two-thousand-word article, and should. The word count was never the product. Here is what the fee actually buys.

A red and white megaphone with a speech bubble reading 'brand voice', beside the words 'Brand Voice is a branding job'

Brand Voice Is a Branding Job, Not a Writing Job

If your website, your brochure, and your ads sound like three different companies, the problem is not the writing. It is that nobody ever decided what the brand sounds like.

Vertical resin slab with stained-glass style tree — multi-coloured canopy panels with black wire outlines
Explorations

The maker behind the work

Carpentry, resin, paper-cutting, vocals and writing — Musings of a Material Girl. Where the eye and the patience come from, kept separate from the commercial work on purpose.

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