When Strategy Thinks Like Design

For most of my career, my job titles have said designer or art director, but the way I've worked—questioning the brief, poking at the problems behind the problem, thinking about how something would actually live in the real world—has always been inherently strategic.

So when I joined the Strategy team at Moxie Sozo, it didn't feel like switching disciplines. It felt like finally putting a name to the kind of thinking I'd been doing all along. The tools changed. The deliverables changed. But the instinct always stayed the same: understand people, find the pattern, and make the story clearer.

After nearly a decade in design, I thought I was saying goodbye to a part of myself, but any trace of bittersweetness was quickly overshadowed by excitement. I was eager to dive deeper into the kind of thinking I'd always loved but rarely had time to fully explore. And as it turns out, I hadn't left design behind at all—I'd just stopped expressing it through pixels and typography. The same design instincts that had guided me for years were still at work, just translated into new tools and deliverables. That's the thing about design: once you learn to think that way, you don't turn it off—you just apply it differently.

Designers are trained to make sense of ambiguity. We start by understanding people, uncovering the real problem (or often, problems), and then shaping something that connects. 

Strategy, at its best, follows the same process—just with different materials. Instead of grids and color palettes, I'm arranging insights, tensions, and human truths until they make sense.

Design taught me to recognize patterns, like how small details ladder up to larger systems. It taught me empathy: to think about who's on the other side of what I'm making. It taught me iteration: that the first idea is rarely the right one, and refinement is part of the craft. All of that translates directly into strategic work.

At Moxie, those instincts show up every day. When I'm shaping a workshop or building a messaging framework, I'm still designing. I'm designing clarity. I still think about hierarchy, rhythm, white space—just oftentimes in a slightly different way. I think about how information feels when someone encounters it. That design mindset keeps strategy from living only in spreadsheets and slides. It keeps it human.

If design taught me to see, strategy taught me to name. It gave language to instincts I'd always felt—the "why" behind the "what." Strategy pushed me to slow down and define meaning before jumping into form. It deepened my understanding that creativity isn't about what you make; it's about what you move—in people, in culture, in behavior.

Working in strategy has also made me a sharper creative collaborator. Nearly two (official) years into strategy, I can see how much it's changed the way I think about creativity—it's no longer just about making; it's about moving people.

It inspires. It sets the stage for design to do its best work—not by prescribing solutions, but by illuminating possibilities.

That's what I love most about this side of the process. I still think like a designer—visual, intuitive, empathetic—but now I get to help build the conditions where creativity can thrive. When a strategy is clear, tension-filled, and human, it doesn't limit creativity. It unlocks it.

What I've come to appreciate most at Moxie is that strategy and design aren't separate lanes—they're a part of the same current. Every project starts with both disciplines at the table, shaping and challenging each other's thinking from the very beginning. It's not about who "hands off" what, but how ideas evolve together.

That overlap is where the real magic happens. It's where a brand's story finds its shape—when insight turns into imagination, and imagination turns back into clarity. Our strategists think visually. Our designers think conceptually. And together, that tension keeps the work inspiring, relevant, and human.

We build intentionally for that kind of collaboration. From workshops that invite creative teams into early brand strategy to frameworks that are meant to be played with, not just presented—our process is designed to spark. To provoke. To connect.

At Moxie, that overlap isn't accidental. It's something we cultivate—a constant dialogue between insight and expression. It's what keeps our ideas fresh, our brands alive, and our people inspired.

The longer I do this work, the more I know that the best ideas don't come from one discipline or another—they come from the space between them. When strategy thinks like design and design thinks like strategy, you get clarity and surprise. Logic and emotion. Ideas that not only look good but actually mean something in the world.

That overlap is the heartbeat of how we work at Moxie. We don't see strategy and design as separate phases but as an ongoing conversation. A conversation that constantly pushes the work to be smarter, bolder, and more human. It's how we stay inspired, and how we keep crafting brands that people genuinely connect with. 

Because in the end, strategy and design are just two ways of doing the same thing: understanding people, finding patterns, and making stories clearer. It's the same instinct that's guided my work from the start—only now, I get to call it by both names.