“Why are designers so obsessed with timelessness?”
This was the question Sarah Kleist asked on her newsletter, that sparked this whole episode in the first place (yes, episode 017 Sarah Kleist).
Did I feel slightly called out? Yes.
Was I deeply intrigued? Also yes.
‘Cause listen: I’m the first to preach consistency. Recognition matters. Repetition matters. A brand only works if you actually use it.
But I can also acknowledge that “timelessness” is the branding equivalent of being someone’s “good girl”… And you knooow how I feel about advice that’s served on a silver platter with a side of superiority.
Besides, “timelessness” might’ve been how my Communication Design degree described a strong & durable visual identity. But they also based that analysis on case studies of big corporations, and household name brands.
YOU (and the clients I work with) are a creative service provider. A personal brand. An online business owner. A living, evolving human whose thinking sharpens, positioning shifts, prices rise & opinions get bolder over time.
Which is a *completely* different design problem.
I already knew the world of personal brand building was paradoxical at best (and mildly unhinged at worst), but I invite you to listen in & find out how both of these views can be true at the same time!
I'm a massive advocate for consistency, but I also know that businesses evolve. You pivot industries, shift your audience, rework your offer suite, raise your prices…
Of course your brand is going to need to keep up with all of that. So rebrands aren't inherently irresponsible... imagine if I actually believed that as a brand designer!
The problem is when impulsiveness gets dressed up as evolution. If you're changing your colours every time you fall down a Pinterest rabbit hole of butter yellow, you're not leaving enough time for recognition to build.
And on the designer side, if a client rebrands two years after working together, it can feel like a personal failure, like you didn't build something strong enough. So "timelessness" gets framed as the responsible choice.
Those morally superior adjectives have always rubbed me the wrong way. They make anything outside the norm seem frivolous or reckless or — God forbid — unprofessional. But you started your own business. You didn't do it to play safe. So let's actually question the advice we're handed on a silver platter.
Timelessness DOES solve a real problem. We've just stopped asking what that problem actually is.
Think Nike, McDonald's, Apple, Coca-Cola... These are brands that need to be recognised worldwide. They have to survive leadership changes, economic crashes, massive cultural shifts, entire *decades* of time. Stability isn't a stylistic preference for them: it's how they stay in business.
And as designers, these are the brands we're taught. They're the textbook case studies, the examples of "done right."
But you're not Coca-Cola. And I'm certainly not designing for a board of directors and global supply chains (thank God).
You're most likely an online service provider. A creative business owner with a personal brand that's deeply tied to your personality and way of thinking. Your brand is a living thing that evolves with you, and that is a completely different design problem.
Design is problem-solving.
So before anything else, we need to identify what problem we're actually trying to solve.
For most of the service providers I've worked with, it sounds something like: "How do I look like I know what I'm doing (because I do) / how do I bring years of DIY decisions under one cohesive brand system?"
That's a wildly different brief than "make something that will survive the next 10 years."
In the online business space, we watch personal brands evolve in real time, and it rarely looks like a dramatic rebrand. It's more gradual: branding a signature offer as something bigger than the personal brand, introducing a special colour for a content series, switching up fonts with the seasons.
These small iterations accumulate. Compare someone's visuals from three years ago to now, and they might look completely different.. but no one experienced it as a rupture. We watched it happen from the inside out. We called it refinement & confidence.
So now we have two truths sitting side by side:
That's the balancing act. And the key thing to notice is this: if someone can change their fonts every month and it still feels cohesive, something else is doing the heavy lifting.
Their face. Their point of view. Something is anchoring the brand underneath all the experimentation.
You can always count on change; no matter how perfectly your brand captures where you're at right now, you will outgrow that version of yourself.
So maybe instead of asking "Will this look good in 10 years?", the better question is: "Is this brand flexible enough to grow with me and help me achieve my goals?"
When you build your brand as a sandbox (a set of guidelines that give you room to play rather than a rulebook that keeps you locked in), you create breathing room for natural evolution. You can experiment, and you'll still be on brand, whatever that looks like for you.
It gives you the blinkers you need to not get sidetracked by trends, shiny object syndrome, or whatever everyone else is doing. And as your thinking evolves, your visuals can evolve too.
Some people will do this by building in public, letting their evolution unfold in front of their audience in real time.
Others prefer a big, theatrical Greatest Showman reveal moment (I'll let you guess which one I prefer...)
Both are valid. The point is: your brand needs to fit you. It needs to grow with you. It's a living, evolving thing, just like the human behind it.
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✦ Listen to Ep. 017 “Rebranding The Word ‘Performance’, with Sarah Kleist”
✦ Subscribe to Sarah’s “Act Break” newsletter
✦ THE COLOUR CIRCLE: Bring the Canva design you’ve been (over)fiddling with for hours
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Over the last 5 years as a Brand & Marketing Designer, I’ve helped freaks like us design their unconventional brands so they can step onto the main stage & own their weird. Because if you wanted to be, look or sound like everyone else, you wouldn’t be where you are today. Now it’s your turn.
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