When we work with a client on brand positioning and core messaging, one of the primary goals of our discovery sessions is to identify their why: why a founder chose to start their business, why they are targeting a specific audience / market and, ultimately, why their customers should choose their brand over competitors in a crowded market.

Our work has always been a blend of supporting new brands and re-engaging the audiences of time-tested businesses. In fact, having a client roster that reflects how brands evolve over time has both pushed our creative growth and made us better strategic thinkers. New concepts bring bold ideas and fresh perspectives, while more seasoned teams have learned from their successes and their failures, bringing invaluable wisdom to their projects.

As a business owner, there are countless reasons why you might choose to eliminate printed materials: sustainability, simplicity or even just saving money. But if your business operates in the realms of hospitality, luxury or even community-building, choosing to go all-digital may undermine your brand’s reputation and customer experience.

As a creative studio driven by editorial-style storytelling, the process of getting to know our clients is where we find our strongest sense of inspiration. While some founders want to start by showing us brands they admire—and those references can be helpful—we ultimately return to the personal stories of the individuals or teams behind a business and the why that motivates them to show up to work.

While the process of designing a logo or creating a visual brand identity may feel interesting or energizing to many entrepreneurs, talking or writing about their work is often a more daunting task. In turn, some founders will postpone the creation of core messaging, hoping that great packaging or photography is enough to sell their story.

If you’re new to marketing your business, the sheer number of possible channels (LinkedIn, Instagram, Print Ads, YouTube, TikTok…) can feel exhausting. And if the words “email marketing” make you want to sigh and click “unsubscribe,” you’re not alone. Yet, when used thoughtfully, email can actually be a powerful, proven tool for cutting through the marketing noise.

No matter how strong or timeless your brand is, if it’s out of step with the day-to-day reality of your business, it might be time for a makeover. That’s why, after eight years of growth and evolution, we spent the winter reevaluating what was working—and what wasn’t—for our own website and brand identity.

As a branding and creative studio, the vast majority of the work we feature is public-facing. Yet many businesses engage with our services well before their official brand launch. From attracting investors, to aligning the efforts of a multi-person team, articulating your anticipated offerings through a well-designed concept deck can be an important pre-opening phase of your business development.

The origins of Cognoscenti Creative are firmly rooted in the world of food and beverage, though many of our projects extend into such adjacent industries as hotels, architecture, design and wellness. Yet even as our work broadens, hospitality remains at the core of our ethos, as we highlight the human-centric stories behind bar-setting brands.

As East Coasters who started our careers in New York City, one of the questions we get most often is why we moved to Colorado. In short, we fell in love with the uniquely collaborative community of entrepreneurs in our adopted state, and we’re proud to champion the clients, brands and organizations that inspire us, year after year.

One of the key values we pride ourselves on as a creative studio is the ability to meet our clients where they are. For many of our projects, that means building off of a business’ existing logo or slightly outdated identity and developing it into a more comprehensive, engaging and effective brand.

One of the most common questions we hear from prospective clients is: “How can you help differentiate my brand from competitors?” In truth, positioning your brand in a crowded market is first and foremost a business decision—one that should start with your operations and extend through your brand identity. We look to our clients as partners in this process and specialists in their field, whether that be hotels in a particular town or the current state of medicinal mushroom products. With their assistance, we are able to identify significant competitors and articulate a unique value proposition, while also bringing to the table inspiration from companies in adjacent fields.

When most people think about “branding,” what comes to mind is logo design. Yet behind this eye-catching emblem of a brand is a deeper dive into the values, practices and people that make your business distinct in its sector. In short, we believe all successful branding starts with holding up a mirror to the authentic, day-to-day operations of your business and drawing inspiration from that reality throughout our creative work.

For small business owners, who often wear many hats, social media can sometimes feel like “another thing to do.” Yet while some may dismiss social media as a distraction, it can actually be an incredible marketing tool for your business—especially when you know how to make it work for you.

When it comes to creative services, most people can imagine what graphic design, copywriting or even website design might entail. But the secret ingredient behind all of these tangible deliverables is the more subtle art of strategy. For us, strategy is about prioritizing your unique business goals and creating work that can directly support them. It’s also a matter of providing objective perspective and challenging existing assumptions about what makes your brand truly interesting or different.

As a creative team, we spend the vast majority of our time telling the stories of other entrepreneurs, makers and innovators—yet we rarely have the opportunity to share our own story. That’s why we were so excited to sit down with Darryl Kelly, the CEO of Hectic, to talk about our own journey as small business owners and the values that drive our work.

When we talk about the value of brand photography, it’s more than maintaining an eye-catching Instagram profile or website. Rather, photography is an opportunity to exude your brand’s values and ground your visual aesthetic in the real-world experience of your services or products. For us, much of this inspiration comes from our editorial work, where the focus is on storytelling rather than selling. We find that this more authentic vision for a brand photo library also helps to create evergreen assets that stand the test of time.

We often describe our work at Cognoscenti Creative as “informed by editorial”—but what exactly does that mean? For us, it’s a combination of connecting with the most exciting leaders in Colorado food, hospitality and agriculture, as well as bringing the energy and style of the work we do for editorial outlets to our branding and creative services.

When beginning a website project, it’s common to focus on the design details—the white space, the continuous scroll, the photo layout, the top navigation, etc. Yet many websites that catch our attention ultimately fail to provide an intuitive user experience. In fact, while looking at other websites for design inspiration is helpful, it can also lead you down the path of creating something that may stray from your unique business needs.

Whether you’ve previously worked with freelancers and agencies or are seeking contract services for the first time, one of the most important steps in that process is establishing creative fit. At Cognoscenti Creative, this process is essential to how we navigate new client relationships, as we only take on projects where we feel we are the best possible resource. So how exactly do you, as a client, go about making that decision? Below are a series of questions to guide your thought process.