THANK YOU to everyone who believed in my lil 1-man shop in 2023 🫶 here's to much, much more in 2024. I'll continue to focus on design, direction, and development for small to mid-sized businesses in 2024:

For anyone curious what a "full" brand design process looks like beyond design, I posted mine this morning here:

Hi, I'm Brennan and I provide Direction + Design + Dev for startups ✨ grateful for a busy Q1, quick highlight reel 👇 see more:

RT @johndsaunders: To celebrate ten years in business, hundreds of completed projects and an amazing remote team, my book is FREE until tom….

Kid Cudi I poster I made ages ago, coming back from the archives for the solar eclipse 🌒

Put in the work, little by little, & it pays off 🤝 but like watching plants grow, there'll be days where you can't see progress. Or it's 1 step forward, 2 steps back. But zoom out, take a breath, and compare to where you were years ago. Good things take time 🌱.

Here's a lil race car I drew 🏎️

“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast” - one of my favorite mantras from year 1 of running my independent design practice. See why it matters on my LinkedIn:

Going into 2024, I've got automation on the brain – trying to be mindful of anything I can remove from recurring tasks top optimize flow state time. Fellow independents, any suggestions?.

I put together an annual report where I break down stats, finances, client overview, & key things I learned after my first full year freelancing - read it on LinkedIn:

Tomorrow’s my 1 year anniversary for diving into freelance FT 💪 in celebration of that, and in hopes that others find it useful, I put together an annual report breaking down my stats, wins, and lessons. Posting on LinkedIn tomorrow at 6:30am MST:

People want to work with people they like, folks w/ competence who own their mistakes. Be kind - and maybe REMEMBER PAST CLIENTS, incl. advocates w/ lower titles - and you’ll have non-stop referrals. Don’t, and well, your DMs might get shared for all the wrong reasons. 🙃.

My reply was in fact polite (not exaggerated like above), because who knows, maybe they hired someone to manage their profile & that person didn’t know. But my reply was read, no response, so… maybe they just packed it up and moved on 😂. What can we learn here?.

I resisted every sarcastic bone in my body and replied to say, while I appreciate the flattery, not only have we met before… but I was the one who found, vetted, went to bat for, and successfully HIRED you & your agency - on a sizable, high stakes project too 🙃🙃🙃.

Got a DM from an agency owner who 1st said it was great to meet me, told me how impressed he was with me, my business, & my work, then asked if I’d be up for learning more about him & what his agency could do for me. Welp, him not doing his research made this happen 👇 🧵.

New quick read on LinkedIn about why we as creatives need to zoom out every once in a while to better focus on the day to day:

Brand identity for a pilates studio with a nod to internet culture – identity design by yours truly. The symbol is a combination of a smiley face (hinting at the digital-native owner) and the human form in boat pose (strength + flexibility + pilates itself).

It's wild to me that I can take clients through design -> dev -> launch ON MY OWN in a matter of WEEKS with @webflow – after working with bloated agencies my whole career, this process is a delight.

No cheating what are the first 4 pics on your pinterest homepage

This has been a hard lesson, but resonates. I’ve done a lot of work to create a clearer line between my work as a designer, and me. It’s helped my mental health, my ego, and honestly the work itself.