Brand Strategy · Creative Direction · Design Production

You're the only one holding it together.

Most organizations lose the brand somewhere between the strategy and the output. I align what an organization offers, what it says, and how it says it, because that alignment is what builds audience trust. I hold the creative direction and I produce the work myself.

25+

Years of Practice

200+

Client Engagements

18 Years

Retained Partnerships

The problem I solve

Six departments. Six versions of your brand.

You have a communications director. You don’t have a creative director. So the strategy lives in a document, and the actual work gets made by whoever is available, which usually means a freelancer here, a program manager there, and a template someone modified three years ago. Your audience notices before anyone internally does.

The problem is rarely capacity. It is that nobody owns the whole. Hiring a junior designer adds hands, but the strategic judgment still has to come from somewhere, which usually means it comes from you. Hiring an agency buys senior thinking that resets with every new account team. Hiring a fractional creative director who only directs means you still need a designer to execute, and now you are managing the space between them.

I close that space. I don’t just create brands. I help organizations live their brands after launch.

Three ways to work together

One method. Three ways in.

Every engagement starts the same way, with a conversation about what you are actually trying to change.

The Brand Roadmap

Two to four weeks, fixed fee.

For organizations that never made the decisions. Some grew quickly and built everything under deadline pressure, and some are institutions where no one has been empowered to say what the brand actually is. Either way, every new piece of work reopens the same argument. We do the interviews, run one working session where the open questions get closed, and put every decision into a single reference document your team can work from.

BEST FOR: first-time brand clarity, repositioning, or preparing for a rebrand.

Fractional Partnership

Retained, typically 10 to 20 hours per week.

For nonprofits, universities, foundations, and healthcare organizations with ongoing communications needs and no full-time creative director on staff. I operate as part of your team, attending key meetings, joining planning sessions, and functioning as your senior creative voice and your production resource. Remote-first and available on demand.

Best for: organizations with steady external-facing volume and a communications director who is carrying more than one role.

Ongoing Design Support

Monthly, defined scope.

For growing businesses with a steady stream of work that needs to look like it came from the same place. Logo and identity systems, collateral, annual reports, campaign assets, social content, presentations, and event and trade show materials, all produced by one person who already knows your brand.

Best for: multi-location businesses, arts and event organizations, consumer brands entering retail, and professional firms.

What I deliver

Brand Strategy

Brand positioning and architecture, audience and competitor analysis, messaging and brand voice, workshop facilitation, creative brief development, campaign strategy.

Creative Direction

Campaign concepting and art direction, visual identity systems, creative team leadership, agency and vendor management, executive presentations, stakeholder alignment.

Design Production

Logo and identity design, brand guidelines and style guides, campaign assets and collateral, social media content, annual reports and publications, presentations and pitch decks, infographics and sales sheets, trade show and environmental graphics.

Hands-on execution, with no separate designer needed.

How I work

Three steps, and everything written down.

Discover

I start with your people and your materials. Stakeholder conversations, and an honest audit of what you are currently putting into the world, so we can see the gap between what you say and what your audience actually sees.

Decide

A facilitated working session where the open questions get closed. Who you serve, what you stand for, what the brand looks and sounds like. These are decisions, not discussions, and they get made in the room.

Make

I produce the work in Creative Cloud, which means nothing gets lost translating strategy into a finished file. The direction and the execution come from the same hand.

Why organizations choose me

Direction and Execution, One Person

Most fractional creative directors are either strategists who cannot execute or designers who cannot lead. I do both at the senior level. I concept the strategy, direct the vision, and produce the design work, which means faster turnaround, no translation loss, and a lower total cost of creative.

Behavior Change Expertise

As an ICF-certified coach with fifteen years teaching design across six Atlanta institutions, I understand how people actually change, not just how campaigns look. Every brand touchpoint, workshop, and communication is built to move audiences toward action. It also makes me a stronger facilitator and a steadier partner in a room full of stakeholders.

Partnerships That Keep Getting Better

My two longest partnerships have run eighteen years each, with Morehouse School of Medicine and Life University. That is not loyalty, it is value that accumulates. The longer a partnership runs, the deeper my understanding of your organization, your audience, and what actually works. Most creative agencies reset that knowledge with every new account team. I don’t.

Cultural Fluency

I am trilingual in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, with thirty-five years navigating Latin American and North American cultural contexts. For organizations serving diverse communities, that is the difference between translated communications and communications that were built for the audience from the start.

Anchor partnerships

Morehouse School of Medicine

National African American Child and Family Research Center

Embedded brand strategy, creative director, and designer for the first federally funded research center focused exclusively on African American children and families.

Life University

Marietta, Georgia

Brand and creative partnership spanning institutional identity, marketing events, and multi-channel campaign execution across print, social, and digital channels.

partnerships and other clients

Solenis / Coca-Cola Pool Solutions

Georgia State University

Georgia Tech

Growing Leaders

GA BrightStart

NCPERS

Kantor & Kantor Law

Truck & Tap Restaurants

Elm Street Cultural Arts Village

About

I'm Katia

I have spent twenty-five years doing brand work for organizations whose missions ask something of their audiences, which is most of the work worth doing. I hold an MFA in Graphic Design from Georgia State University, I am an ICF-certified coach, and I spent fifteen years teaching design across six Atlanta-area institutions, so I understand higher education from the inside rather than from across a conference table.

I was born in Brazil and came to the United States for university, and I have worked across North American and Latin American markets ever since. That shapes how I think about audience, because I know what it is to be spoken to in a language that was not built with you in mind.

I work remotely from Woodstock, Georgia, and I currently take on one to two fractional partnerships at a time, alongside a small number of design projects each quarter.

Credentials

MFA, Graphic Design, Georgia State University
BA Graphic Communications and BS Biology, Kennesaw State University
ICF-Accredited Coaching Certification, Coacharia
Cognitively-Based Compassion Training, Emory University School of Medicine
Leading from the Emerging Future, MIT u.lab
altMBA, Akimbo

Testimonials

What partners say.

Our Prevention Research Center team at Morehouse School of Medicine worked with Katia for several years — so there was no question once we were awarded funding for a new research center that I wanted Katia to be part of our communications team. The graphics she designed have helped establish our center and we frequently receive compliments on our work.

Latrice Rollins

Morehouse School of Medicine

Let's find out if there's a fit.

Whether you need a partner for the long term or a specific piece of work done well, start with a thirty-minute conversation. No commitment and no pitch. If what you need is not what I do, I will tell you that on the call.

klord@designmindstudio.com | 770.356.9516 | designmindstudio.com