The Brands We Remember Were Never Built to Fit In – An Interview with Matea Grgic-Ivanovic
Matea Grgic-Ivanovic is the founder and brand strategist behind MGI Studios, where she combines business thinking with visual identity to help growing businesses close the gap between who they have become and how they are perceived. Her approach challenges the idea that premium branding is defined by a certain aesthetic and instead focuses on meaning, character and long-term relevance.
In this exclusive interview, Matea shares why so many premium brands have started to look the same, how to recognize when a business has outgrown its identity and why the brands people remember are built on conviction rather than trends.
Matea Grgic-Ivanovic, Founder & Brand Strategist
What led you to build MGI Studios around strategy and meaning rather than visual design alone?
For me, strategy and visual design have never been separate disciplines. A brand can look beautiful, but if that beauty has no connection to the business behind it, it becomes decoration rather than identity. I am of the belief that strategy and meaning are the heart and soul of a brand and visual design is its body.
My background in business shaped the way I approach branding. I naturally look beyond the visual layer and ask what the company is trying to achieve, who it wants to reach, how it wants to be perceived and what it genuinely stands for.
That is why MGI Studios was never meant to be purely a design studio. I wanted to combine business thinking with visual appeal. The goal is not simply to create something that looks premium. It is to create an identity that makes sense for the business, feels relevant to the right people and can grow with the company over time.
How do you uncover what is genuinely valuable about a business before deciding how the brand should look?
I rarely start by asking what a brand should look like. I first want to understand the business and the people behind it and I want to see what is already there that deserves to become visible.
Sometimes that value lies in the founder’s perspective. Sometimes it is hidden in the way the company works, the experience it creates, the standards it refuses to compromise on or something customers repeatedly appreciate, but the business itself considers completely normal.
A large part of my process is listening carefully and looking for patterns. I pay attention to what founders talk about differently, where their energy changes, what they are proud of and what they protect even when it would be easier not to.
That is often where the real substance of a brand sits and what differentiates it from others.
Values define a brand, but I do not believe they should simply be chosen from a list. They have to be visible in the way a business behaves and talks. Once that foundation becomes clear, the visual identity has something real to translate rather than something artificial to invent.
What tells you that an established business has outgrown its current brand?
One of the clearest signs is when there is a gap between the quality a business delivers and the quality people perceive from the outside.
A company may have evolved significantly over several years. Its service has improved, its expertise has deepened, the clientele has changed and the ambition may be completely different from when the business first started. Yet visually, it is still communicating an earlier version of itself.
That creates what I would call a brand gap. You often notice it when a company wants to enter a more premium market, attract a different type of client or simply be taken more seriously, but its identity still speaks to the audience it had five years ago.
Many businesses begin with whatever they can create at the time, which is completely normal. The problem comes when the company keeps developing while the brand stays still.
At that point, branding is no longer about making something prettier. It is about bringing the external perception back in line with what the business has actually become.
Why do so many premium brands end up looking similar despite trying to appear distinctive?
I think many brands confuse the visual codes of a category with having an identity of their own. They see what currently signals “premium” – neutral colours, minimal typography, a certain type of photography, a lot of white space – and begin adopting the same language. Eventually, everyone communicates luxury, but very few communicate character.
The issue is not minimalism itself. Minimalism can be incredibly distinctive when it comes from a genuine point of view. The problem begins when aesthetics are chosen because they feel safe or fashionable rather than because they belong to the brand.
I also think many businesses are afraid of being too specific. Following a trend feels less risky than showing personality. But distinction often requires the opposite.
Premium, to me, is not about removing everything until a brand looks expensive. It is about intention, beliefs, craftsmanship and clarity.
A brand should be allowed to have a face of its own. Otherwise, we end up with beautiful businesses that are almost impossible to remember.
What should a business clarify about its positioning before investing in a visual identity?
Before investing in a visual identity, a business should have clarity around how it wants to be perceived and by whom.
That does not mean every founder needs to arrive with a finished positioning document. In my work, this is often something we uncover together because many clients come to me precisely because they feel that something is no longer aligned but cannot clearly articulate where the problem lies.
We look at the business as a whole. Who is currently buying? Who should be buying in the future? Where does the company want to move? What is creating friction between the current perception and the desired one?
Sometimes the issue is the target audience. Sometimes the offer has evolved while the communication has not. In other cases, the business is trying to occupy a premium position without creating a consistent premium experience.
The visual identity should come after those questions begin to make sense. Design becomes much stronger when it is answering a strategic problem rather than simply creating a new appearance.
Which parts of a brand usually have the greatest influence on how customers perceive its value?
Perceived value is created through many touchpoints, but language and imagery have an enormous influence because they are often among the first things people experience.
Before someone buys a product or works with a service provider, they usually encounter the brand somewhere digitally. They see the photography, read the words and begin forming an opinion long before they have direct experience with the business.
Language tells people how a brand thinks. Imagery tells them what kind of world they are entering.
If a company wants to communicate a high level of quality but relies on generic stock photography, inconsistent visuals or language that feels interchangeable with everyone else in the market, there is immediately a disconnect.
For me, premium perception is strongly connected to focus and intentionality. Every element should reinforce the same feeling rather than compete for attention.
People constantly interpret visual and verbal signals, often without consciously realising it. That is why branding influences value before a customer has even had the opportunity to experience the actual product or service.
What does building a brand with substance mean to you personally?
For me, a brand has substance when there is something underneath the surface that gives its decisions meaning.
It has a point of view. It knows what it believes in and those beliefs are not simply written into a brand guideline. These beliefs are lived by the brand and that is what gives a brand a heart.
I am drawn to brands where you can feel that certain choices were made for a reason rather than simply because they looked good. When a product, service or experience reflects a deeper conviction, people sense it.
The same principle guides MGI Studios. I care deeply about quality, respect, trust and keeping my word. Those things influence the way I work just as much as my visual preferences do.
Substance, to me, is also about consistency between what a brand says and what it actually does. A beautiful identity can attract attention, but meaning creates attachment. That is ultimately what I find most interesting about branding: the moment when design stops being an aesthetic layer and becomes an expression of something real.
What would you encourage entrepreneurs to reconsider if they want their brand to be remembered rather than simply noticed?
I would encourage them to stop asking only, “How can we get attention?” and start asking, “What should still be true about this brand ten years from now?”
Attention is temporary. Meaning has a much longer lifespan. It is easy to build something around what is currently trending because trends provide an existing visual language and often create quick recognition. But recognition and memorability are not the same thing.
The brands that stay with us usually stand for something that goes beyond the aesthetic moment they were created in. Their design may evolve, but there is an idea underneath that remains recognizable.
Entrepreneurs do not need to deliberately be different for the sake of being different. They need to become more specific about who they are and what they believe.
That often means resisting the temptation to copy what already seems successful. I believe long-term brands are built when identity grows out of conviction rather than comparison. If people can understand what your brand stands for even as the visual trends around it change, you are building something much harder to replace.
What part of your personality is reflected most strongly in MGI Studios and what might surprise people about the person behind the brand?
Probably the strongest part of my personality reflected in MGI Studios is the way I listen. I am naturally introverted and very attentive to people. When someone speaks about their business, I often notice small patterns in the way they describe certain things. I observe what matters to them, where their frustration comes from or what they may not yet have found the right words for.
That sensitivity has become an important part of how I work. What may surprise people is how ambitious I am. My personality is quite calm, but internally I have extremely high standards for myself and for the work I create.
I have never believed that you need to be the loudest person in the room to build something meaningful. I would rather let the quality of the work speak.
Ultimately, I do not only want people to remember MGI Studios because of a particular visual style. I would like them to remember the way I think.
Design styles can be copied. The way someone sees, interprets and connects ideas is much harder to replicate. I think that is one of the strongest things any creative person can build around.
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