Integrating Human Design into my branding business was never the plan. Owning a branding business wasn’t either.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a brand strategist. Nor did I craft a neat, linear path from design school to a boutique studio. I didn’t even know what Human Design was until a season of my life when things weren’t working and it felt like human design shot out of the heavens. And yet finally, nothing felt ‘right’ in my life, and I was finally at the lowest point that trying something different was better than staying where I was originally at.

This version of Press & Palm exists because of that season and what I discovered during it. And also because I realized, slowly (and then suddenly all at once) that the way most branding is done is missing something extraordinarily fundamental.

This is that story.

I came from the Insurance Marketing World –

I graduated college and immediately went into the corporate world and worked for an insurance company in their marketing department. While nothing was inherently wrong with that job, I remember it feeling so…empty?? After 16 years of schooling, I would wake up at the same time every day, pack the same lunch, and sit in the same cubicle. It felt so quietly empty and….wrong, even when things looked ‘fine’ from the outside. I did a bit of graphic design work at that position, realizing quickly how much I loved the branding piece of design. In my spare time, I would design fake companies just to get more practice, and soon had the realization that maybe…just maybe…life outside of a cubicle seemed possible. I would wake up early to work on my business before my 9-5, and then work in the evenings to continue building..something? I wasn’t sure what it was yet. I knew I wanted to be a brand designer, and the possibilities seemed endless. I started Press and Palm in March 2020 (yes…oof) and took the pandemic to figure out if this was something I wanted to do. (NO secret to anyone – it absolutely was!) I tried to balance both. I had one foot in the corporate world and one foot in my design business, until one day I just felt like I had enough. My car was giving me trouble while I was visiting my then long-distance boyfriend at the time. And I remember emailing my boss over a weekend saying I would have to take a Monday off to get my car fixed. It was then – in that exact moment, that I realized I wanted the freedom to make my own decisions and do what I want from day to day. I wrote up my 2-weeks notice and gave it without really having a backup plan. My boss was shocked, as was I, and I dove headfirst into building Press and Palm. But…it didn’t feel right at first. And I’m not sure if it’s because I started this business so young and my frontal lobe had to develop, but I was following everyone else’s advice when it didn’t feel right. I purchased the $5k masterminds in hope that it would skyrocket my success. I made a ruthless Instagram schedule that burnt me out more than my day job had. I had the ‘dream job’, I was working for myself, I had left my corporate life behind, so why was this still feeling so difficult and hollow?

The skills I built in that season matter greatly, and they’re woven into everything I do to this day. But the version of me doing that work was performing and auditioning for a role that was never going to be quite the right fit. I think a lot of the entrepreneurs I now work with know exactly what that feels like.

Two things happened at almost exactly the same time

The pivot to human design and strategic branding for Press & Palm wasn’t a single lightning bolt moment. It was two things that arrived in close succession and happened over the course of a few years, but the combination of these two things changed absolutely everything.

First: I discovered Human Design

I remember listening to a podcast and the hosts were talking about human design. I decided to give it a try and download my chart for free. I was BIG into the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, and Astrology (basically any sort of personality test I adored) so I loved anything that could tell me more about who I was, and why I did things the way I did them. I like to say that Human Design found me, and it was around the same time I had randomly decided to quit my corporate job – coincidence? I remember the first time I read my chart – I had ordered an in-depth reading from a well-known HD company and poured through the pages. There was a moment where tears began to form in my eyes – I wasn’t lazy. I was a Projector. For the first time in my life, someone, something, was telling me that I wasn’t broken. That the exhaustion I had felt my entire life wasn’t a character flaw or a lack of discipline. Projectors aren’t designed to have the same sustainable energy as the majority of the population, and I had spent decades measuring myself against a standard that was never meant for me. That realization didn’t just change how I saw myself. It cracked something open. And almost immediately I switched that lens onto my business!

Reading my chart as a 4/1 Energy Projector with Emotional Authority felt like someone had been watching me try to run a race I never trained for and finally handed me a different map. Projectors aren’t built for constant output. We’re built for depth, recognition, and being invited into the rooms where our insight is valued. Once I understood all of that, I finally stopped fighting myself and the world around me. And my business got better almost immediately.

Second: I saw a gap in how branding was being done

I had been designing beautiful brands for clients and I loved it (and was really good at it!) – but something had always felt a bit hollow about the process, and I finally understood why. I was creating visuals without soul. Pretty logos that didn’t say anything real about who these people were or what they were here to do. I had been trained in the tools, the trends, and color theory, but no mastermind or course I had invested in was teaching the thing that actually mattered: who is this person at their core, and how do we communicate that?? Human Design gave me a framework for exactly that! I started quietly weaving it into my process; using HD to understand a client’s energy type, their strategy, their natural way of showing up in the world, and then building their brand identity around that truth. The results were unlike anything I had produced before. Clients felt seen, understood, and loved how they came across visually. They said things like “this finally feels like me” and THAT is when I just knew I had found something so real and true for me. I was terrified to put that out into the world though. The design industry doesn’t exactly have a section in the curriculum for “branding meets Human Design.” I was worried it would come across as too spiritual, too niche, too out there for people to take seriously. None of the coaches or masterminds I had invested in were talking about this, and I couldn’t find another designer doing what I was doing,. So for a long time that felt isolating (and still sometimes does). But then I realized that was the point! The gap in the industry that I was seeing was an invitation to dive deeper. Purpose, for me, wasn’t a lightning bolt moment or a perfectly laid-out plan. It was a breakdown while reading an exported PDF that led to a breakthrough, and the courage to trust that what I had found was worth building something around, even if I had to build it alone.

Standard branding gives you a beautiful & visual system. A logo, a palette, a font stack, brand guidelines. And that’s genuinely useful! But it doesn’t ask the deeper questions: Who are you, really? How do you naturally communicate? What kind of clients will actually light you up? What does success feel like in your body, not just on paper?

Without those questions, you end up with a brand that looks professional but doesn’t always feel like you. And a brand that doesn’t feel like you is a brand you’ll quietly undermine every time you show up online.

And then I finally realized: these two things were made for each other

The more I learned about Human Design, the more I kept seeing the same thing: the elements that make someone magnetic, trustworthy, and aligned in their personal life are the exact same elements that make a brand work.

Your defined centers tell you what’s consistent and reliable about you: that contributes to your brand voice. Your type tells you how you’re designed to attract: that’s your visibility strategy. Your profile tells you how you’re meant to be perceived and trusted: that’s your positioning. Your authority tells you how you make your best decisions: that’s your offer structure.

Every element of a strong brand already exists inside your design. Human Design just gives us an easier way to read it.

That was the moment that my business shifted. I finally saw it as more than a business plan. I finally realized branding built around who you actually are will always outperform branding built around who you think you should be.

The beliefs that shape every project I take on

I want you to know what you’re getting when you work with me, where it’s about more than just the deliverables, but the values and experience underneath them. The way I work is a direct reflection of everything I’ve described above

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I live what I teach. I built Press & Palm around my own Human Design. I market as a Projector; with depth over volume, positioning over promotion, and absolute quality over quantity. If it feels different from other designers you’ve encountered, that’s why. I’m not performing a brand, I’m living one day by day.

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My methodology is genuinely unlike anything else out there. Combining HD chart analysis with brand strategy isn’t something I borrowed from a course or a mentor. It’s something I developed through my own discovery and hundreds of hours of client work. No two charts are the same. No two brands I build are the same.

—	I deeply care about the people I work with. I take on a limited number of clients at a time, and not as a scarcity tactic, but because this work deserves my full attention. When I’m in your brand, I’m really in it. I want to understand not just what you do, but who you are and why it matters.

If this resonated, I’d love to meet you!

The entrepreneurs I work best with are the ones who have always felt like the standard playbook wasn’t quite written for them. The ones who are ready to stop performing their brand and start living one. The ones who are willing to go deeper than aesthetics and ask the real questions about who they are and who they’re here to serve.

If that’s you, I think you’d love what we can build together.

Here’s what working with Press & Palm looks like → Book Your Soul-Driven Brand Reading FREE 5-Day Human Design Challenge: Soul-Driven Brand Blueprint → Join here