Strategic Branding for High-Trust Professionals – An Interview with Creative Director Rachel Simms
- Jun 2
- 7 min read
Rachel Simms, RGD, is the founder of Broadbent Studio, a strategic brand and web design studio in Hamilton, Ontario. She holds the RGD designation, the highest professional credential in graphic design in Canada, and she's spent over ten years building brands for health and wellness practitioners and professional services firms who are exceptional at their work and ready to show up online like it.
Her signature methodology, the Diamond Blueprint, is a strategic discovery process that happens before a single design element is touched. It's the reason her clients are still on their original brand five to ten years after launch.
In this interview, Rachel talks about why strategy has to come before aesthetics, what it actually feels like to find the right practitioner when you're the one searching, and why she believes visibility is one of the most important equity issues nobody in her industry is talking about.
Rachel Simms, RGD, Creative Director
Rachel, your work emphasizes "strategy before aesthetics." How did you develop this approach, and why is it essential for professionals who rely on trust?
Honestly, it came from watching what happened when I skipped it.
Early on, I took projects where we'd jump straight to visuals because that's what the client was excited about. What I ended up with were beautiful things that didn't work. They looked polished and fell flat in the real world. The problem was never the design. We'd built a solution without understanding the problem.
For health and wellness practitioners, especially, that gap is costly. These are regulated professionals who can't use patient testimonials in many cases. So everything the brand does must build trust, which is essential for long-term relationships. The logo, the website, the words. They are the testimonial. That responsibility demands that we understand the person behind the practice before we touch a single design element.
The Diamond Blueprint came out of that need. A way to slow down before we accelerate.
Can you walk us through your Diamond Blueprint methodology and how it has transformed your clients' branding processes?
It starts with a conversation that most designers don't have.
Not 'what colours do you like' or 'send me websites you admire.' Before any of that, I want to know your origin story-what inspired you to choose this work, and what kind of client brings out your best? I also ask about your vision for the practice in ten years, so we can build a brand that aligns with your long-term goals and values.
From there, we map the ideal client as a real person, what she's carrying when she finds you, and what she needs to feel before she'll trust you enough to reach out. Then we look at the competitive landscape and compliance considerations.
Only after all of that do we design.
What I see consistently is that the process changes how practitioners talk about their work. They come in knowing they need a new logo and leave with greater clarity about their practice than they had before. That clarity is what makes the brand work. The design just makes it visible, giving practitioners a sense of control and confidence in their branding.
You specialize in branding for health and wellness practitioners. How does effective branding influence the way clients perceive their expertise and trustworthiness?
I want to answer this from a place most designers don't come from – the perspective of the person searching.
I've been in therapy for a significant part of my adult life. Before I found the therapist who genuinely changed things for me, I tried a few who weren't the right fit. Every time I sat across from someone who was almost right but not quite, I felt it. I kept going because I needed to find the one where it felt easy. Where something in my gut said: this is her.
That feeling isn't magic. It's communication. It's a practitioner whose whole way of showing up says clearly: I understand what you're carrying, and you're in the right place.
For regulated professionals who can't rely on testimonials, the brand carries that entire weight. When I build a brand, I think about the woman who lands on that website at eleven o'clock at night, finally ready to ask for help. She deserves to feel she's found exactly the right person.
What trends are you currently seeing in the branding space for health and wellness professionals, and how can they stay ahead in a competitive market?
The most significant shift I'm seeing is practitioners moving away from the generic wellness aesthetic – sage green, minimalist template, soft script font, stock photo of someone meditating. It's been the default for years because it feels safe. But when every practitioner in a city looks identical, none of them are actually saying anything. The ones breaking through right now aren't afraid to be specific about who they help and what makes them different.
I'm also watching accessibility become a genuine differentiator rather than a compliance checkbox. A website that's easy to navigate and doesn't overwhelm someone who's already overwhelmed isn't just the ethical choice. It's the smart one.
For professional services firms, there's real movement toward brands that communicate both authority and warmth. The old model was all credentials and gravitas. What works better now is specificity paired with approachability – expert enough to trust, human enough to call.
In your opinion, how can professional service firms, like lawyers or accountants, communicate their deep expertise through branding?
The first thing I tell professional services clients is that credentials are the floor, not the ceiling. By the time someone's looking for a lawyer or accountant, they're assuming a baseline of competence. What they're actually trying to figure out from your brand is something harder to quantify: do you understand my situation, and can I trust you with something that matters?
That means communicating specialization clearly. A family law firm shouldn't look identical to a corporate litigation firm. Your brand should signal the specific problems you solve and the people you solve them for. When it does, the right clients recognize themselves. When it doesn't, you spend the first ten minutes of every meeting establishing credibility your brand should've built before you walked in.
I build what I call the expert's expert positioning. The brand of the person whom other professionals refer their complicated cases to. That takes both authority and warmth to pull off.
Your work emphasizes building long-term relationships through branding. How do you ensure your designs foster trust and lasting client connections?
The short answer is that I build for truth, not trends.
Trends change. What's visually current in 2026 will feel dated by 2029. But a brand rooted in who the practitioner genuinely is doesn't age the same way. The majority of my clients are using their original brand five to ten years later.
Every design decision I make serves a specific psychological need of the client's client. The page structure, the white space, and the first thing you read on the homepage. All of it is answering one question: what does she need to feel to trust you enough to reach out?
I also built compliance and ethical standards into the brand foundation from the start. For practitioners, knowing their messaging is already built around what they can and can't say removes a layer of anxiety. That confidence becomes part of the brand, too.
As someone dedicated to equity in design, how do you believe branding can be used as a tool for social change and visibility in the community?
I've experienced firsthand what the right professional in your corner can do. And I've watched what happens when someone doesn't have access to that.
A few years ago, I was in a work situation that was genuinely damaging my well-being. I reached out to an employment lawyer – someone I wasn't sure I could afford. She translated my contract into plain language, told me what I could and couldn't do, and helped me find the door out. Within a month, I was free. What came after wouldn't have happened if I'd stayed.
I've also watched what it looks like when someone doesn't have access to the right support. The difference between having the right advocate and not having one isn't small. It can mean years of your life.
The barrier is so often just a matter of visibility. Someone doesn't know the right practitioner exists, or finds her and doesn't feel confident enough to reach out. Branding that's clear and specific closes that gap. Visibility is access, and access changes things. That's why I do this work.
What role do you think design plays in shaping the legacy of a business, and how do you approach creating a legacy-driven brand for your clients?
I think of a brand as the artifact that outlives the day-to-day.
Long after a practitioner has retired or passed her practice on, the brand continues to communicate who she was, what she valued, and the standard she held herself to. When I'm working on a legacy-driven brand, I'm asking different questions than I do in a typical design brief. Not just what do you want it to look like, but what do you want to be known for in ten years? What'll clients say about you after five years of working together? What won't you compromise on?
Those answers are why two practices in the same specialty end up with completely different brands, even if their service lists look similar. The brand isn't the services. It's the person.
A therapy practice owner told me after we worked together that she finally felt like she was running a real business, not a side project, but something she could grow into and eventually hand off. That's the shift I'm building toward.
You've had a profound impact on the next generation of designers. What's your personal philosophy on the intersection of design and business, and how do you pass that on to your students?
The thing I say to my students that lands hardest is this: design without business understanding is just craft. And craft alone won't sustain a career or create real change.
I see young designers who've been taught that caring about the commercial side of their work compromises their integrity. That's a false choice. Understanding a client's revenue model and what success looks like for their business isn't selling out. It's what makes you a strategic partner instead of someone executing someone else's vision.
I teach using StoryBrand and Human Design frameworks, always grounded in the RGD code of ethics – professionalism, accountability, and genuine respect for the public good. I'm deliberate about showing students that financial sustainability and values-driven work aren't in conflict.
I also want them to see where the real work is. Designing for a therapist who helps survivors, building brands for minority-led firms, creating accessible spaces for people who're often excluded, that's where design actually changes things.
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