Introducing: Rendezvous Creative

We’ve been talking a lot about branding lately, haven’t we? Obviously, branding is what we do here at The Design Lab, but we’ve also been digging deeper into what it means and why it’s so critical for your business.

As we’ve mentioned before, we aren’t just talking visuals here. When we say “branding,” we mean design, copy, marketing, customer service, and values. The whole enchilada.

Generally, branding is looked at as a totally separate piece of the business pie — as something you do separate from the other cogs that run your business machine. But here at The Design Lab, we define branding as a collection of experiences that show your audience, customers, or clients exactly what you offer and what you stand for.

Each piece works in tandem, not entirely on its own, to create the brand that attracts people to you. It’s what we like to call brand chemistry. But… for most business owners… it feels like “brand chemistry” is theirs to create, because they are the ones trying to hold all the pieces of a brand together.

The problem with branding in the online business space

Businesses need branding. That’s not new information. 

The real challenge? It’s so damn hard to get everything working together properly. 

When you know you want to elevate your current brand, create a new one, or start a second company, what happens?

YOU, as the business owner, are often in charge of hiring all the counterparts. You have a contractor who does each thing — design, copy marketing strategy, customer service, and likely, you’ll handle the development of the values.

But when someone is late finishing their portion of the project (or to be blunt, they half-assed it just so they can collect their paycheck), you end up with a disjointed brand that looks as strung together as it feels. 

And we, for one, are tired of it. Which *trumpet sounds* is why we’re so excited to make this announcement.

Introducing…Rendezvous Creative!

Remember the series we did, The Intersection of Design? The conversations I had with Latasha Doyle, Kate Hutcheson, and Megan Dowd inspired something totally new…

Together, we’ve created a one-stop shop for brand strategy — minus the stress and mismatched contractor drama.

This agency won’t just deliver a brand board and call it a day. We’re talking full development and delivery of all the elements it takes to build a brand. 

And while we still have to keep a lot of it under wraps (for now, anyways), getting to work with people who share that same philosophy is a breath of fresh air. We’re all tired of seeing businesses work with agencies or contractors that don’t actually deliver on a holistic experience or who can’t see how each piece of the brand puzzle fits together.

And this agency we’re building? It’s pretty damn cool.

And who is Rendezvous Creative you ask? 

It’s time to meet the four minds behind Rendezvous Creative.

• Nicole Yang: Owner of The Design Lab. Nicole will be working on anything and everything visual, from brand boards to site design and a whole lot more. 
• Latasha Doyle: Owner of Uncanny Content. Latasha is our copywriting mastermind and will focus on developing brand voice, site copy, funnel strategy and copy, content straegy, pillar content, social content, and more. 
• Megan Dowd: Owner of With Megan Dowd. Megan will be working with clients to help them find their values and translate them into an impactful brand (she’s an expert at that!). She’ll also be our clients’ guide throughout the process, making sure that everything is streamlined and smooth.
• Kate Hutcheson: Owner of The Efficient Creative. Kate is our client experience extraordinaire and will help us map out our client’s customer experience to ensure there’s no hiccups as they deliver their offers. 

And the exciting part (aside from creating a whole ass agency of course!)? We got to meet up in Nashville a few weeks ago to solidify the final touches. Rendezvous Creative is scheduled to launch in early 2023 — so stay tuned! 

Our meetup in Nashville

Why Nashville? Two reasons.

One — Kate lives there. Two — Nashville is cool AF. There are so many fun places that we knew would show off our style and perfectly capture the look we are going for with Rendezvous Creative.

During our little “Rendezvous Retreat,” we spent a lot of time talking about:

• What an ideal client process looks like
• What businesses really need when they hire contractors
• How we hope our work can change what’s possible

We worked on our one-and-only offer — a full-service branding package — to sort out the kinks and make sure it was comprehensive enough for our clients. 

We also mapped out what it means to be internally accountable — as in, who’s going to be responsible for what at every single touchpoint. 

And we talked about our own values. Duh.

This particular part was so much fun because we had previously workshopped them over Zoom — but being in the same room together gave us the chance to adjust our values and really get an idea of what we stand for as a group.

We realized: This is exactly what our clients are going to be doing with us. It was a full-circle moment!

The photoshoot

That’s not all we did while in Nashville, though! We also got to shoot some brand photos with the amazing Jessica Rai. We shot at two different locations, dressed up in some AMAZING colorful ‘fits, and smiled our asses off (literally, could not feel our faces at the end of the day, but, worth it).