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 2014, that had changed. Most of my work became remote.

Today, roughly 95% of my freelance work happens through video calls, email, shared documents, and collaborative platforms. These tools are efficient. They make global work possible. They allow a brand strategist to move between time zones, industries, and conversations without always needing to travel.

I value that flexibility.

But after all these years, I still believe that nothing replaces being in the room.

That is not a rejection of remote work. It is a reminder that client relationships are part of the brand strategy process. The quality of the relationship affects the quality of the work.

I was reminded of this during a visit to Philadelphia.

 

What the Philadelphia Visit Revealed

A client invited me to visit their high-tech industrial facility. It was our first in-person meeting in more than a year.

The invitation mattered to me, but the visit became more valuable than I expected.

I walked through the facility. I observed the operations. I spoke with members of the team. I paid attention to the environment and the way people interacted with one another.

I also asked many questions.

Some of those questions were about the business itself. Others were more open-ended. I wanted to understand how the company worked from the inside, not only how it described itself from the outside.

That distinction is important.

A company can explain its values in a presentation. It can describe its culture in a strategy document. It can list its strengths on a website.

But culture becomes easier to understand when you see it in motion.

You notice how people speak to one another. You notice whether decisions feel centralized or shared. You see what receives attention. You sense where the organization has confidence and where it may still be finding its direction.

Those details are difficult to capture over video.

The visit gave me a deeper understanding of what the company truly represented. That understanding shaped the brand strategy that became the backbone of its updated corporate identity.

Immersion Is a Strategic Tool

In-person meetings are often described as a way to build goodwill. That is true, but it is incomplete.

For me, immersion is also a research method.

A strong brand strategy needs more than a clear market position. It needs an accurate understanding of the business behind that position. The strategy should reflect how the company behaves, what its people believe, and what makes its way of working distinct.

This is where brand discovery becomes more than a series of interviews.

Discovery involves listening carefully. It also involves observing context.

The physical environment can reveal how a company sees itself. The team can reveal how the business actually operates. Informal conversations can expose nuance that may never appear in a formal briefing.

None of this replaces strategic thinking. It gives strategic thinking better material to work with.

The same principle applies to the broader idea of a brand operating system. A useful brand system cannot be separated from the culture that produces it. The frameworks, visual identity, and implementation tools need to reflect the organization’s real behavior.

I explore this in more detail in The Proven Brand Operating System Framework. A brand is not only a logo or a set of guidelines. It is a structure that helps a business make decisions and act consistently.

To build that structure well, you need to understand the people who will use it.

The Value of What Is Not Said

Digital communication gives us access to information. It does not always give us the full meaning behind that information.

In person, conversation has more layers.

There is tone. There is body language. There are pauses, expressions, and small shifts in attention. There are moments when someone says one thing but communicates something more subtle through how they say it.

These details are not minor. They can change how a strategist understands a business challenge.

A video call can be focused and productive. It can also be highly edited by the conditions of the call. People arrive with an agenda. They speak from prepared notes. They move quickly between topics.

That efficiency is useful.

Still, there is value in the unplanned parts of a conversation. A shared meal. A walk through a workplace. A handshake before a meeting begins. A discussion that continues after the formal questions are finished.

These moments do not replace the work. They often make the work clearer.

They create a little more room for honesty and curiosity. They help people move beyond the roles of “client” and “designer” and meet as collaborators.

That shift can strengthen the work considerably.

What Remote Work Does Well

Remote work has changed my practice for the better in many ways.

It allows me to work with businesses across countries and industries. It reduces the friction of scheduling. It makes collaboration easier to document. It keeps files, feedback, and decisions accessible.

For many parts of a project, remote work is the right choice.

It works well for:

• Regular project updates.
• Document reviews and written feedback.
• Iterative design development.
• Presentations and approvals.
• Ongoing implementation support.

Remote work also creates useful discipline. When communication happens through shared tools, decisions need to be made visible. Notes need to be clear. Responsibilities need to be understood.

Those are important qualities in any brand strategy process.

But efficiency is not the same as depth.

Remote work can help people collaborate frequently. It cannot always create the same sense of shared experience. A relationship may remain functional without becoming fully understood.

That distinction matters when the project involves sensitive questions, a major repositioning, or a change to the company’s identity.

When Face Time Matters Most

I do not think every client meeting needs to happen in person. Travel has a cost, and remote collaboration is often the most practical option.

The question is not whether in-person meetings are always better.

The better question is: When would being there create a deeper understanding than another call could provide?

For me, the answer is usually connected to three moments: discovery, alignment, and trust.

Discovery

An in-person visit can help reveal how a business actually works. This is especially useful when the brand is closely connected to a physical environment, a production process, or a team culture.

Walking through a facility gave me information I could not have gathered from a presentation alone.

Alignment

Brand strategy can involve difficult conversations. Positioning requires choices. A visual identity can challenge familiar ways of working.

When the decisions are significant, being together can make the conversation more direct and more human. It is easier to clarify a concern before it becomes resistance.

Trust

Trust develops through repeated, consistent behavior. Showing up in person is one way to demonstrate that the relationship matters.

It says that the work is worth investing time in. It also creates a shared memory that sits outside the project files and meeting notes.

These moments can be especially valuable in remote work client relationships, where the partnership may otherwise exist almost entirely through screens.

The Balance Between Tools and Presence

The answer is not to return to a fully in-person model.

Remote work is now an essential part of how many businesses operate. It supports flexibility, access, and international collaboration. I would not want to lose those benefits.

The stronger approach is to use both modes deliberately.

Use digital tools for continuity. Use face-to-face time for depth, when possible.

That might mean meeting at the beginning of a project to understand the business properly. It might mean visiting a facility before developing the strategic foundation. It might mean getting on a plane when a relationship needs attention or when a major decision deserves more than a short call.

The right balance will vary by client.

For some businesses, a remote-first process will be enough. For others, the work will benefit from time spent where the company’s culture is visible and active.

That judgment is part of the role of a brand strategist.

The setting also changes from project to project. You can see this broader range of context in my portfolio.

Business Is About People

The Philadelphia visit reinforced something I already knew but had not experienced in that way for some time.

Business is about people.

Technology connects us. It helps us move quickly and work across distance. But relationships create the conditions for meaningful collaboration.

The best strategic work depends on understanding more than a brief. It depends on understanding the people behind the brief: what they value, what they are trying to change, and how they want the business to be understood.

That is why my brand and visual design process] begins with strategy. The visual identity should express something real. The implementation tools should support how the business actually operates.

A good relationship does not make difficult work disappear. It gives the work a stronger foundation.

If you are developing a new identity, revisiting your positioning, or trying to make your brand more useful inside the business, you can learn more about Obeid or book a conversation.

All clients are not created equal, but the ones that really matter deserve a real visit. Get on a flight and go see them.