Category: Reflect

Do I Specialize? No, And That’s the Best Part of the Job

Credits Rami Hage-Obeid Published on Oct 05, 2026 Do I Specialize? No, And That’s the Best Part of the Job 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 [...]

Real Relationships: Why Showing Up in Person Still Matters in Brand Strategy

Credits Rami Hage-Obeid Published on Feb 17, 2025 Real Relationships: Why Showing Up in Person Still Matters in Brand Strategy A Remote Career, With One Clear Exception When I began my design career 25 years ago, working in person with clients was the norm. Remote work belonged to the realm of futuristic novels. By around [...]

Growing as a Self-Taught Designer: 3 Struggles That Shaped How I Work

Credits Rami Hage-Obeid Growing as a Self-Taught Designer: 3 Struggles That Shaped How I Work Being a self-taught designer has been rewarding. It has also been uncomfortable. I did not begin with formal design training or a structured framework to follow. I learned through projects, mistakes, observation, and repetition. Confidence came slowly. It was built [...]

Is it time to rebrand and reposition Lebanese politics?

Credits Rami Hage-Obeid Punlished on Jan 23, 2025 Is it time to rebrand and reposition Lebanese politics? A Designer Thinking About Politics I was born in Lebanon in the late 1970s and grew up in the north of the country during the Lebanese civil war. Life in my village was relatively normal. Still, the chaos [...]

Lessons from 10 Years of Freelancing as a Self-Taught Designer

Credits Rami Hage-Obeid Published on January, 2025 Lessons from 10 Years of Freelancing as a Self-Taught Designer As a freelance designer, my path has been anything but traditional. I had no formal training and no mentors when I started. I learned through a long cycle of trying, failing, and learning, over and over again. The [...]