For the last three years, I have been leaning into more engagements through the Toptal network, which I am part of, as a brand design generalist.

Moving to a new country and trying to pick up your life after 40 is challenging. There is no elegant way to describe it. You start again, rebuild your routines, and try to find where your work fits.

Toptal has proved to be a good source of work. You also have to hustle to get projects, which is completely fair.

But this post is not about that.

It is about the range of projects I have had the chance to work on, and how much I have learned from this.

A Stranger On A Video Call

Most engagements begin in a fairly simple way.

You connect with a stranger over a video call. For the first few minutes, both of you are trying to work out whether this is a fit. They are explaining the business, the problem, and what they think they need. I am listening, asking questions, and trying to understand where I might be useful.

There is usually a small amount of polite conversation. Then, fairly quickly, you arrive at the real question:

Can we help each other solve this?

The problem is often related to the brand. Sometimes the business has outgrown its current identity. Sometimes the positioning is unclear. Sometimes the visual system does not match the quality of the work. Sometimes the company is trying to explain something complicated and has no clear way to do it.

The industry changes. The underlying problem is often familiar.

That is one of the things I enjoy about the work. Every new conversation asks me to enter a world I do not already know and understand enough of it to be useful.

“Do You Focus On A Specific Industry?”

When I was young, my father used to encourage me to know a little about a lot. That shaped both how I work and my curiosity as a person. I think it has more to do with this answer than I realized at the time.

I am often asked whether I focus on a specific industry.

My answer is always no.

This does not mean I arrive knowing everything about every sector. I do not know the technical details of photonics on day one. I am not an expert in arboriculture because I once worked with an arborist. I cannot suddenly explain semiconductor manufacturing because I have designed something for that industry.

That is not the point.

With the right questions and the right data gathering, I can understand the business and its people well enough to work on its brand problem.

The method is the constant. The industry is the variable.

The work depends on listening carefully, finding the important information, separating useful signals from the background, and structuring what I learn. It depends on being comfortable saying, “I do not understand that yet,” and then asking the next question.

Over the last three years, the variety has been considerable.

The List

Here is a partial list of the industries and businesses I have had the opportunity to work with:

– Architectural hardware
– Real estate tech
– Digital dental brand
– Photonics
– Santa Claus: a one-off client, a jolly man with a large white beard who plays Santa Claus seasonally
– Data security
– Ed-Tech
– Consulting
– Data governance
– Sports supplement
– Fashion brand
– ERP service provider
– Arborist
– Baby brand
– Fine dining
– Semiconductor
– Building contractors
– Sock industry
– Kickstarter product
– Medical care
– Wellness
– SaaS
– Architecture
– Solar power

At this point, the list has enough range to sound made up!

It is not.

And yes, Santa Claus is on it. That was a real client. He was, in fact, a jolly man with a large white beard who plays Santa seasonally. It is difficult to build a list like this without giving Santa Claus the respect he deserves.

The range is one of the most enjoyable parts of the work. One week, I might be looking at a technical business with a highly specialized audience. Another project may involve food, fashion, healthcare, construction, or a product being prepared for Kickstarter.

Each one has its own language, assumptions, customers, and internal logic.

That is a lot to learn.

Learning From The Outside In

The first responsibility is to learn how the business works.

That means asking questions before making visual decisions. What does the company do? Who is it for? What does the audience need to understand? What makes the business different? Where does confusion currently appear? Are stakeholders aligned?

The questions are not identical for every project, but the discipline is similar.

I gather the information available. I listen to how people describe the business. I pay attention to the words they repeat and the parts they explain with uncertainty. I look for the distance between what the company believes it is saying and what a customer may actually understand.

I am not trying to become an expert in an entire industry before beginning. That would be impossible.

I am trying to understand the specific business well enough to identify the brand problem.

That distinction matters.

A brand project does not require me to know everything about an industry. It requires me to know what I need to learn, how to learn it, and how to turn that understanding into clear decisions.

My brand and visual design process is built around that kind of movement: strategy first, then visual expression, followed by the tools needed to apply the identity in practice.

A strong process travels.

The Benefit Of Not Knowing Everything

There is a particular advantage to entering a project without too many assumptions.

You notice things that may be obvious to people inside the business but invisible to everyone else. You ask for explanations. You question familiar language. You look at the category from the outside.

This does not replace the client’s knowledge. It depends on it.

The client understands the business, the customers, the market, and the history. I bring a different kind of attention. Together, we work through what needs to be understood and what needs to be made clearer.

The work becomes a process of translation.

A technical business may need to explain its value without overwhelming people. A healthcare brand may need to build trust without becoming cold or generic. A food or fashion brand may need to express character quickly. A building contractor may need to communicate reliability across a very practical set of touchpoints.

The category changes the context. It does not remove the need for clarity.

Patterns Start To Appear

The other benefit of working across industries is that patterns begin to appear.

Not obvious patterns. The projects are too different for that.

The patterns are usually underneath the surface.

A company in data governance and a company in fine dining may have very different audiences, but both need to make their value understandable. A semiconductor business and a baby brand have little in common visually, but both need an identity that can remain coherent across different forms of communication.

A fashion brand and an ERP service provider may speak in completely different tones, but both need a clear point of view. A solar power company and an architectural hardware business may operate in different markets, but both need to explain why their offer matters and why they can be trusted.

Working on one problem gives me something to carry into the next.

It may be a better question. A sharper way to structure information. A clearer understanding of how a visual identity needs to behave when several people are using it. Sometimes it is simply a reminder that the obvious answer is not always the useful one.

I wrote about some of this in Growing as a Self-Taught DesignerGrowing as a Self-Taught Designer: 3 Struggles That Shaped How I Work. Much of the learning happens by entering unfamiliar situations, making decisions, seeing what works, and adjusting when it does not.

That process does not stop because you have been doing the work for a long time.

The System Stays, The Context Changes

I do not approach every project in exactly the same way.

The work has to respond to the business. A brand identity for a digital dental brand should not be forced into the same expression as a sock company. A semiconductor business does not need to borrow the language of a wellness brand. A Santa Claus business should probably be allowed to be a little more cheerful.

But the underlying structure of the work remains consistent.

I am still trying to understand the business. I am still identifying the audience, the problem, the opportunity, and the decisions the brand needs to support. I am still working toward a system that can be understood and used by other people.

This is part of why I think about brand as an operating system. The visual identity matters, but it is supported by strategic frameworks and implementation tools. The system should help a business make decisions when the situation is new.

I have written more about that in The Proven Brand Operating System Framework.

The framework is not there to make every brand look alike. It provides enough structure for the identity to remain recognizable while the context changes.

Why Being a Brand Design Generalist Works

There are times when I wonder whether I should focus on a single industry.

Specialization can look reassuring from the outside. It gives people a short answer. It makes a professional identity easy to summarize.

I am currently reading Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, and it happens to speak directly to this tension.

The unfamiliarity keeps me attentive. It prevents me from relying entirely on habit. It makes every project a small act of research, and every conversation a chance to learn how another business sees its own world.

That has been enriching in ways I did not expect.

Every engagement is an opportunity to grow a relationship, grow my skillset, and grow as a person. The work is not always easy. The process can involve uncertainty, revisions, and the occasional moment where the problem is less clear than everyone first thought.

That is normal.

The reward is getting close enough to a new business to understand what it is trying to become, then helping give that direction a form people can see and use.

I do not specialize in one industry.

I specialize in learning what the work requires.

And it is a lot of fun.