Simona + brand. The key words: professional work, a creative designer, excellent communication. Bonus: a strategic perspective on the business from the side. If needed: coaching and support. This is a short testimonial, as if it were finished already, right? 🙂 But it’s also a great encouragement to choose her for even the smallest things, not just the big ones. Why? Because even the small things matter. 😃

And I’m a solo founder. At least for now. A seasonal, creative, and highly specialised solo business. My olive grove needed a distinctive brand and expressive materials for communicating it outwardly. The testimonials about Simona on Facebook showed me that I could trust a designer I didn’t yet know personally. Besides, from those clients’ testimonials I felt her expectations‑clarifying, concrete communication and her sense for the brand. Because how else can you create a meaningful brand? Expectations don’t just happen on their own.

In communication, I was able to lay out and express my entire creative process and all the little tangles in it 😋 — without any political correctness. A huge thank you to Simona. Her ability and tools (!) to hear the client and understand their needs exceeded anything I could have expected. The system that helped her get to know the client and their needs — the questionnaire, the questions, the answers, the processing — works for both sides. I personally gained a lot from it too.

The hardest part was choosing the final mark from four others that could just as easily have been the final ones too. That’s why I truly value Simona’s patient support. Her explanations of how the brand works in detail and how it is used (for both the owner and the clients) were useful and very interesting.

I also highly value Simona’s flexibility. Need industrial notes? — No problem. Want a finalised green? — That happened too (though I should probably say I came back to the designer with suggestions).

The result? I’m pleased that for the time being the olive grove has received enough recognisable features. Visitors no longer need to wonder whether it needs some kind of sign. So once we sort out the signs, I’ll ask Simona to take care of the product side too — labels for the olive oil and illustrations for the little visitors.

And do you know what was most interesting? The fact that the grove and this place resisted being named in any straightforward way. Based on the meaning, it seemed that no word would fit. But in the spring of life, Simona distilled it, and we stopped at a symbol familiar from my pain — but in different circumstances, on labels. Until the spring equinox, for half a year, the olive trees here watch the full moon sink into the sea. I’ve had to decide long in advance what to call my longing in the poems I won’t write. And it comes to me unexpectedly, just as sudden. Like my story in this grove on a hill full of light 🙂