What Happens When a Branding Studio Needs a Brand?

Part 1/3 of our rebrand story: avoidance, trusting the process, and doing the work we ask our clients to do.

🍋 Welcome to TART TIMES, our studio dispatch on branding, culture, and the art (and business) of showing up. This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on the TART process—and how we followed it ourselves in our own rebrand. (How meta!) Over the next two weeks, we’ll walk you through each phase, using our own refresh as the case study. TART 2.0 drops July 18.

What Happens When a Branding Studio Needs a Brand?

A few months ago, I had that familiar flinch-before-you-send feeling: a flicker of hesitation before sharing TART’s website. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved our case studies and felt aligned with our values and voice. But…I had to admit that the site and brand didn’t reflect where TART is (or where we’re headed).

And the annoying part? It was happening to me.

It’s a feeling I’ve heard from so many clients: a sort of “I’ve outgrown this” ache. There’s a sense that something needs to shift. Maybe your branding just doesn’t feel right. Maybe your messaging isn’t clear. Or maybe you’re tired of bumping up against the same limitations of your current site (e.g. “this mobile navigation sucks!“).

Maybe your business has evolved and it’s time that it reflected the caliber of your offerings and the future of you’re building.

You know the saying: we teach what we most need to learn? Turns out it’s true. I’d spent years guiding others through this process, but I’d never fully given TART the same royal treatment. Why?

TART’s website today (pre-refresh). Roughly the same since pandemic days.

I had a logo I liked and not much of a color palette. The site technically worked, but it didn’t capture the clarity, personality or creative spark I ask my clients to aim for. It’s embarrassing to admit my internal docs were a motley crew of design decisions on the fly, lacking a coherent system.

I’d avoided rebranding and a fresh website design for years. Partly because I was busy and prioritizing client work. But more than that, I knew exactly how much time and energy it would take. And while I welcomed the design and website work (bring it on), what I was really avoiding was the introspective part.

“It technically still works”

I knew it was time for TART’s metamorphosis from scrappy caterpillar to something with wings. But, in order to move forward, I had to step back and give my business a good, hard look by asking myself the questions I’d been avoiding.

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Phase One: Discover (Explore Your Core)

TART’s 4-step process

So I put myself in the client seat and followed TART’s process from start to finish. Phase One, Discover, starts with our Brand Visioning Questionnaire: a series of 30+ questions designed to surface tone, values, audience insights, goals, personality, and creative direction. Some I’d answered for TART before, others I hadn’t. Some questions include:

• Who is your primary audience?

• What are the values of your brand/organization?

• What are the limitations of your current brand (if you have one)?

• What is the desired emotional impact of website?

• What are the current pain points of your current site?

The goal of this phase isn’t polish. It’s to better understand who the client is, where they’re at, and what needs to evolve. It’s about getting the raw ingredients of the brand identity out in the open. Here, in the Discover phase, we set the tone and the strategy for everything to come. From there we move into Phase Two (Clarify) and begin to define the client’s Flavor. (More on that next time.)

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What came up in the questionnaire?

So many feelings! I really let my myself have it. One excerpt below reflect the heart of where I felt stuck and what I wanted to shift.

Me: Problems with existing brand? Me: It’s not much of a brand.

Filling out the Brand Visioning Questionnaire felt a bit like getting on a carnival ride. There was fear and queasiness in naming what I’d been avoiding…and realizing that, deep down, I was afraid of being seen. But once I let those feelings surface, I started to feel something else: the thrill and the relief in imagining what else might be possible.

In the Audience section, I reflected on my clients and the clarity and transformation they’ve seen as a result of working together.

Direct quotes from clients helping put what TART brings to the table in words

I had to reconnect with how I want people to feel when they interact with TART and use that as a guiding light. At its best, the experience should feel:

• Clarifying and personalized

• Creatively energizing and strategically grounded

• Guided by a clear path forward, with a brand that’s unmistakably theirs

That’s what I aim to offer as a creative partner: someone who listens deeply, asks the right questions, and brings both imagination and strategic clarity to the table. Branding doesn’t have to feel like a scary black box.

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Working through my own questionnaire showed me exactly where clients tend to get stuck. Not because they don’t have vision, but because self-definition is hard to do alone. It takes time and structure. And honestly…it can stir up a lot of uncomfortable feelings.

Giving myself the space to reflect helped me better understand my own approach: how I work and where I create the most value for clients. It also gave me room to name where I was headed, and to imagine what growth could look like from here. From that place, I could finally begin shaping a visual identity and website that felt aligned: expressive in tone, grounded in strategy, and spacious enough to hold what’s next for TART.

More on that next week,

isabella

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🍋 Next Up - Phase Two: Mood boards. Creative Tensions. Defining Your Flavor. And...can branding be sour??