The Unbranded Me: Chapter One
I was born in 1974, which means my childhood happened in a world that now feels almost unrecognisable. There was no internet. No smartphones. No social media. If you wanted to talk to someone, you picked up the phone and hoped they were home. If they were not, that was the end of it. And if something really mattered, you wrote a letter, put it in the post and waited. Life moved slower, conversations moved slower and communication required a level of thought that is almost extinct today.
One of the first real lessons I ever had in communication came when a friend from school moved to Germany. His dad was in the army, they were posted overseas and suddenly a friendship built in playgrounds and living rooms became one held together by envelopes. We became penpals. A novelty now, but it made perfect sense then. The irony, of course, is that my handwriting was terrible. Truly terrible. So the fact that anyone could read a single thing I wrote probably says more about their patience than my communication skills. But the point stands. If you cared about someone, you wrote to them. You took your time. You told stories. You described life in a way that made sense on paper. It was personal, deliberate and, without realising it, a huge part of how I learned to share myself.
Looking back, those letters taught me something long before I understood their value. Writing forces you to slow down. You think before you speak. You consider what the other person needs to hear. You choose your words instead of hurling them out and hoping for the best. A letter is a moment of yourself on a page. A WhatsApp message is… well, not that.
The strange contradiction is that while I was learning these communication skills, I was also painfully shy. Properly shy. The sort of kid who quietly hoped someone else would do the talking so I didn’t have to. And that didn’t disappear entirely with age. Case in point, a ten year old asked for the bill in France recently. Not because I hid behind him in fear, but because I was quite happy to let him do it. Efficient delegation, if you like. But the truth behind that moment is this. I always had the communication skills. I just didn’t have the confidence to use them.
Then the internet arrived. And everything changed, for better and worse.
Suddenly you could speak to people without actually speaking to them. You could type instead of talk. You could hide behind a username. You could be bold, blunt or downright unkind without facing the person on the other side. Communication became instant, and with that it became disposable. As the online world grew, the real world seemed to shrink a little. Borders disappeared but so did barriers to bad behaviour. Being kind became optional. Being human felt less necessary. And some of the softness, the patience and the thoughtfulness that letters once demanded got pushed aside for speed.
I have made friends online. Good ones. People I genuinely value. But there is always something missing without the physical connection, without a voice or a face or the subtle nuance that makes someone feel real. It is not the same as sitting across from someone, or hearing them laugh, or seeing them think. The world is more connected than ever, yet somehow less connected at the same time.
My relationship with Lou is a perfect example of how communication can still work, but only if you put in the effort. We live on separate continents. She is in the UK, I am on the West Coast of Canada. There is no drifting into conversation, no shared silence from being in the same room, no shoulder-to-shoulder familiarity. We talk. Properly talk. Because we have to. We have learnt how to communicate without the safety net of body language or presence. Oddly enough, that has made me better at communicating with everyone, not just her. Including clients I have never met. Including people who trust me with their brand but have never seen my face in person.
Freelancing played a big part too. When you work for yourself, there is no one to hide behind. No colleague to take the awkward bit. No manager to soften the message. You have to do it all. You have to ask for the work, explain your thinking, challenge ideas, guide clients and hold the relationship together. It is communication or nothing, and nothing does not pay the bills.
What I now realise is this. My communication skills were never the issue. My confidence was. I had been taught the right way to connect with people. I just avoided situations where I had to use it. Life, distance, technology and freelancing forced me into those moments, and somewhere along the way I grew into the version of myself I avoided becoming for years.
And that has shaped me as a designer more than anything else.
Design is storytelling. Design is asking the right questions. Design is understanding people rather than pleasing them. Design is interpreting someone else’s world, not forcing your own onto theirs. None of that is possible without clear, honest connection. Not the fast kind. Not the surface level kind. The real kind.
As the world moves faster, I find myself wanting the opposite. A slower way of speaking. A more intentional way of listening. A calmer way of connecting. I do not think we all need to go back to letters, but I do think we need to remember what they taught us. That connection takes effort. That words matter. That understanding someone takes time.
Everything in my life has shaped how I communicate. And how I communicate shapes everything about how I design.
This is only the beginning of that story.