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Notes on the craft.

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

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.

On Blinkit, Your Pack Has Half a Second and a Thumbnail

For a D2C brand the shelf is now a phone screen. Your pack is a 200-pixel thumbnail among a dozen rivals, seen for half a second by someone scrolling one-handed. Design it for that.

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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.

Your Logo Alone Is Not Your Brand

Founders spend three months and too much emotion on the logo, then wonder why the brand still feels thin. The logo is the most visible decision you will make, 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.

Crumpled yellow sticky notes covered in hand-drawn question marks, with the text 'before hiring a copywriter'

The Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Copywriter

Every portfolio looks good; that is what portfolios are for. The real differences between copywriters only show up when you ask the questions most buyers never ask.

Assorted grocery packaging - bottles, jars, cans, bagged pulses and netted apples on a bright yellow background, with the words 'Pack copy goes harder!'

The Words on Your Pack Work Harder Than Your Ads

Packaging copy is read at arm's length, in seconds, at the exact moment of decision, and it is usually the last thing anyone briefs. That is backwards.

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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