A brand voice isn’t created to make writing sound more expressive or interesting. It exists to make communication easier. When a brand knows the kind of language it uses — and the kind it avoids — decisions become simpler. Messages are clearer. The brand feels more cohesive, even as the content shifts across different contexts. A good voice gives structure to the way a brand speaks. It defines the pace of the writing, how direct the message should be, and how much room the re

Minimalism gets treated as a shortcut to clarity. Strip things back, reduce the colour palette, use a lighter typeface — and the design will feel clean. But that isn’t how it works. A minimalist layout can feel just as heavy as an overly decorated one when the thinking behind it isn’t clear. Most “minimalist” designs feel heavy because they’re using minimalism as a style rather than a decision. You can always see it: wide margins, thin text, a few centred lines that look inte

Most homepage copy tries to do too much at once. It tries to impress, explain, reassure, and differentiate within the first few seconds, and the result is usually a kind of soft overload — nothing lands, because everything is speaking at the same volume. The biggest problem isn’t bad writing. It’s uncertainty. Brands often write as if the reader has unlimited patience, or as if they need to prove their worth before the visitor has even decided to stay. That creates noise. You

When a design isn’t working, people usually blame the visuals. The layout feels wrong, the colours look off, the page feels heavy. But most of the time, the problem isn’t the design at all. It’s the structure underneath it — the thinking that didn’t settle before the visuals began. I see this most clearly when something looks fine at first glance but feels strangely resistant. You move elements around, adjust spacing, tweak hierarchy; nothing changes. The layout keeps falling

Before a project becomes a design or a website, it has to exist somewhere less defined. A place where the shape can move a little. For me, that place is Notion. I don’t use it in a productivity sense — no dashboards, no complex systems. It’s more like an open table where I can lay things out before they become fixed. I keep a working space in Notion for Circle Electrical. It isn’t polished. It’s just a loose stack of stages: discovery, customer definition, naming, visual iden

Clarity is one of those words people use constantly, but almost never mean the same thing. Some think it’s about being minimal. Some think it’s about stripping everything back until nothing’s left. Others imagine clarity as a kind of blankness — a safe neutrality. That’s not how it works. Clarity isn’t an aesthetic. It’s a feeling. When a brand is clear, you know it immediately. You don’t have to search for the point. You don’t have to decode the language or fight through the

Most people don’t read websites the way we imagine they do. They don’t settle in, take their time, and move from top to bottom in a clean line. They arrive with half their attention, skim for what they need, and leave quickly if the page makes them work too hard. Everything I design has to begin with that reality. When I’m shaping a page, I think about the reader who’s slightly rushed, or tired, or curious but distracted. Someone who’s already decided within a few seconds whe

Before anything visual happens in a project, I spend time working out the order of things. Not the layout, not the typography — the messages. The hierarchy underneath the language. It decides what the reader notices, what they ignore, and what stays with them after they leave the page. It always starts the same way: I try to understand the one thing the business is actually trying to say. Not the long version they give me on a call, but the line that sits beneath it. Every pr

Most projects arrive in the same vague shape: someone wants a new site, or a refresh, or “something that feels clearer.” The request is almost never the real problem. The real problem is the thing underneath — the part they can feel but haven’t named yet. That’s where I begin. The first conversation is mostly listening. Not for deliverables, but for tension. What’s out of alignment? What’s confusing them? Where’s the drift between how they see themselves and how their brand c

One of the early threads in my digital marketing course has been the relationship between tools, platforms and the way we think while we’re working. Over the past few weeks I’ve been exploring that intersection — partly out of necessity, partly out of curiosity — and it’s already reshaping how I approach digital projects. I’ve spent time with different CMS platforms, each one revealing something about structure and process. I’ve used Wordpress on and off for years, but recent

Before I publish too much here, I need the foundation to feel right. Not perfect — just intentional. Structure is part of strategy, and the way this site is organised should reflect the kind of work I actually do: thinking, shaping, clarifying, making. So today I sat down and mapped the core categories that everything on this site will eventually lean on: Content Strategy, Marketing Strategy, SEO & Discovery, Process & Tools, Learning in Public, Journal, Case Studies, and Des

I’m Elia Vara, and I work in digital marketing and strategy. In my role at Smith & Brenson, I’ve been involved in brand and digital development across the company, and more recently I’ve taken on a lead role shaping the Circle Electrical brand project. Alongside this, I’m formalising my skills through a Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing with Purdue University, and I’ve been looking for a way to bring everything together: the practical work I’m doing, the frameworks I’