If you do not trust your own work,
Recent clients, all independent and founder-led
I help advisory firms, studios and small product companies find the one sentence their clients repeat, then build the identity and launch story around it.
Three formats, each with a fixed scope and a fixed fee. You work with me directly, from the first interview to the handover. No account managers, no retainers.
Independent practice since 2015, after eight years at two identity agencies.
Founder-led brands repositioned, from two-person studios to firms of sixty.
Typical length of a positioning sprint, from first interview to handover.
Find the claim your clients already believe, and the order to say it in.
3 weeksFrom $6,800 02Turn that claim into a visual system your team can run without me.
6-8 weeksFrom $14,500 03Tell a new offer as one story, from the launch letter to the talk track.
4 weeksFrom $5,400Trust is not a feeling you create. It is a decision you make first, then let people see.
We left with nine words we could finally stand behind. Our proposals got shorter and more of them came back signed.
Tomas asked better questions in two interviews than we had asked ourselves in fourteen years of practice.
The sentence is on every bag and every invoice. Wholesale buyers quote it back to us on the phone.
I take two sprints a quarter so each one gets my full attention. Tell me about the firm and I will reply within two working days.
Start a projectSeven principles that decide which projects I take, how they run and what you keep at the end. They are short on purpose. I read them before every first call.
How to read this
Each principle has one bold phrase. If you only read the bold, you have the whole manifesto in about forty words.
Most firms bury their best sentence on page four of a proposal. We find it, then put it where a stranger will read it in the first ten seconds. If it is not true yet, we change the work before we change the words.
The identity, the website and the pitch deck all follow from one line a client would repeat to a colleague. Until that line exists, choosing colors is decoration.
You know the fee, the weeks and the deliverables before we start. I carry the risk of my own estimate. Nobody watches an hourly meter while they think.
Positioning is a decision, and decisions belong to the person who signs the checks. I need two hours of your time each week, not a delegate with a summary.
Every firm calls itself trusted, bespoke and client-first. We replace those words with something a competitor cannot copy: a number, a habit, a promise with a date on it.
A wordmark cannot fix an unclear offer. When the position is clear, the system gets simpler: one typeface, one accent, a few rules you can keep without me.
Every project ends with a short guide your team actually opens, a working session to practice it, and a check-in call ninety days later. No retainer required to keep it alive.
Tomas Reinholt
Kingston, New York. First written in 2019, revised each March.
A first call is thirty minutes and free. You will leave it knowing whether a sprint is the right format, or whether you need something else.
Start a projectEach format has a set number of weeks, a fixed fee and a defined handover. Most clients start with a Positioning Sprint, and about half continue into an Identity System.
Find the claim your clients already believe, then agree the order to say it in. You leave with one sentence and the evidence behind it.
Turn the sentence into a wordmark, a type and color system and the templates you use every week, documented so your team can run it alone.
Tell a new offer, a merger or a rename as one story: the launch letter, the page, the deck and the talk track you give at the first meeting.
| Feature | 01Positioning Sprint | 02Identity System | 03Launch Narrative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Firms that sound like their competitors | Firms with a clear position and a tired look | A new offer, merger or rename |
| Duration | 3 weeks | 6-8 weeks | 4 weeks |
| Fee | $6,800 | From $14,500 | From $5,400 |
| Client interviews | Up to 8 | Uses sprint findings | Up to 4 |
| Positioning sentence and message order | Required first | Required first | |
| Wordmark, type and color system | |||
| Templates: proposal, deck, letter | Deck only | ||
| Launch letter and page copy | |||
| Handover session and 90-day check-in |
Founder session, then interviews with clients who chose you and one who did not. I record the words they use, not the words you use.
Three candidate sentences, tested with three clients. You choose one in a ninety-minute session. We write it down and stop debating it.
The message order, then the system or the story, depending on the format. Reviews happen on a fixed day each week.
A short guide, a working session with your team, every source file, and a check-in call ninety days later.
Founder-led firms of 3 to 60 people that sell expertise: financial and legal advisers, architects, clinics, consultancies and a few product companies with a clear point of view. If your buyers choose you after a conversation, the formats fit.
We expected a new logo. We got a sentence our front desk now uses on every phone call, and a logo that finally fits it.
Tell me what is not working. I will suggest a format, or tell you honestly that you do not need one yet.
Start a projectFormat 013 weeks$6,800 fixed
Three weeks to find the claim your clients already believe, test it with the people who pay you, and agree the order to say it in.
A two-hour founder session on Monday, then up to eight 30-minute client interviews. I send a short findings note every Friday so nothing waits for a final presentation.
Three candidate sentences, each with the evidence behind it. We test them with three clients by email and choose one together in a ninety-minute session on Thursday.
The message order, the proof points and the one-page brief. Friday is a working session with your team: we rewrite your homepage intro and proposal opening together, live.
Format 026-8 weeksFrom $14,500
A wordmark, a type and color system and the templates you use every week, built from your positioning sentence and documented so your team can run it without me.
Every document you send a client, laid out on one wall. Two directions, each drawn from the positioning sentence, presented side by side with the reasoning.
The chosen direction becomes a wordmark, a type scale, a color set and a handful of rules. You approve the system before anything is applied.
Proposal, deck, letterhead, email signature and website art direction. Built in the tools you already use, not in software you will need to learn.
The guide, every source file and a two-hour session where your team produces a real proposal with the new templates while I watch.
Format 034 weeksFrom $5,400
A new offer, a merger or a rename, told as one story. The launch letter, the page, the deck and the talk track for your first twenty meetings.
Why now, what changes for the client, and the one proof that makes it believable. Written as four sentences before anything else is drafted.
The launch letter first, because it is the hardest to fake. The page reuses its structure, so both say the same thing in the same order.
Twelve slides and a spoken version. We rehearse it twice on video calls with someone who has not heard it before.
Final edits, send schedule and launch day. I stay on call for questions from your team and fix anything that comes back from the first replies.
Three recent case studies, each told through the sentence we found and what changed after it. Older projects are listed in the archive, with full studies available on request.
10 projects
Full studies on request
| Client | Sector | Format | Year |
|---|
Try a client name, a sector or a format such as "Sprint".
Sprints for the first quarter of 2027 are open now.
Start a projectCase studyFinancial advice2026
The sentence we found: “We tell you the number before you ask.”
Halden is a nine-person advisory firm that looks after the finances of founders and their families. Its partners were good at the work and bad at describing it. The website promised "holistic, client-first wealth planning", which is what every competitor promised too.
Proposals ran to fourteen pages. Prospects took a month to decide, and almost seven in ten went elsewhere. The partners assumed the problem was price.
Eight client interviews told a different story. Every long-standing client mentioned the same habit, unprompted: in the first meeting, a Halden partner put the uncomfortable figure on the table before anyone asked for it. The annual cost. The shortfall. The fee.
The sentence took nine drafts. The behavior took none.
We tested three versions with clients by email. The plainest one won: We tell you the number before you ask. It is a promise a competitor could copy, but only if they were willing to keep it.
The identity puts the key number first on every document. Reports open with a single figure and a thin bracket around it. A bone ground, a near-black ink, two grays and a copper accent that only ever marks the number that matters.
Display, light. Headings and the key figure.
Bold, used once per page for the number.
Proposals shrank from fourteen pages to five. In the two quarters after launch, the share of proposals that came back signed rose from 31% to 52%.
Proposals signed, up from 31% in the two quarters before.
Shorter first meetings. Prospects arrive knowing the fee.
Words in the sentence the partners now open every meeting with.
We left with nine words we could finally stand behind. Our proposals got shorter and more of them came back signed.
Case studyResidential architecture2025
The sentence we found: “Houses built for the next owner too.”
Brasch designs timber houses in the Hudson Valley. The photographs were beautiful and the enquiries were plentiful, but the briefs were getting smaller. Clients arrived with a mood board and a budget set by cheaper firms, and the practice spent its first meetings defending its fees.
The founders had already settled their position with an earlier sprint. What they lacked was a visual identity that said it before anyone spoke.
Clients who had sold a Brasch house all said the same thing: it sold quickly, above asking, and the buyers asked who had designed it. The practice had been building for two owners all along.
A house is designed once and judged twice.
The sentence became Houses built for the next owner too. It moved the conversation from cost per square foot to value over thirty years, which is where Brasch is strongest.
Every Brasch house begins as three shapes sketched in pencil: an arch for the roofline, a circle for the light, a square for the plan. The identity uses exactly those three, drawn as heavy black forms on bone paper, with one terracotta segment for the detail a client will notice in year ten.
The forms work as a wordmark, as tab dividers in drawing sets, and at thirteen feet tall on the wall of the practice's first exhibition.
Within a year the average brief value rose 38%, and three in four new enquiries mention resale or longevity in the first email. The practice stopped entering design awards and started publishing resale data instead.
Higher average brief value within twelve months.
Enquiries that mention longevity in the first email.
From audit to exhibition, one week over plan.
Tomas asked better questions in two interviews than we had asked ourselves in fourteen years of practice.
Case studySpecialty coffee2025
The sentence we found: “Roasted on Monday. In your cup by Thursday.”
Kerrin roasts about 2,000 pounds a week for two cafés and a growing list of wholesale accounts. Like most specialty roasters, it told origin stories: farm names, altitudes, tasting notes. So did the four other roasters within twenty miles.
Priya Kerrin wanted wholesale to become half the business. The cafés she pitched were polite and unconvinced.
Café owners did not talk about origin in interviews. They talked about consistency, and about stale bags from bigger roasters arriving three weeks after roasting. Kerrin had roasted every Monday and delivered by Thursday for six years without ever mentioning it.
The best claim was already on the delivery schedule.
The sentence wrote itself once we saw it: Roasted on Monday. In your cup by Thursday. It is specific, checkable and hard for a large roaster to match.
The sprint ended with a one-page packaging brief rather than a full identity. Kerrin's own team applied it: black unprinted bags, one terracotta seal stamped with the roast date, and the sentence on every invoice, delivery note and café menu.
Wholesale accounts grew from 11 to 26 in twelve months, and wholesale is now 46% of revenue. Two competing roasters have since started printing roast dates on their bags, which Priya counts as a compliment.
Wholesale accounts, up from 11 a year earlier.
Of revenue from wholesale, the target Priya set.
From roaster to café, printed on every bag.
The sentence is on every bag and every invoice. Wholesale buyers quote it back to us on the phone.
Talks and short essays on positioning, plain language and the habits that make small firms easy to trust. A new note goes out on the first Monday of each month.
Latest: March 2026
Why the most trusted small firms decide what they stand for before they decide what it looks like. Given at the Independents Forum in Boston.
Define what belongs in your brand by drawing its edge first.
A practical method for cutting your firm's introduction down to one sentence a client will repeat.
New notes arrive monthly. Subscribe below to get the next one.
Each note is one idea you can use the same week. No tracking pixels, no sales sequence. About 2,400 founders read it.
TalkIndependents Forum, Boston18 min
The firms people trust most did not design their way there. They decided something first, and the design made the decision visible.
I want to start with a confession. For eight years I designed identities for companies that had not decided what they were. I was good at it. The logos were handsome, the guidelines were thick, and almost none of it changed how a single client felt about the company.
That is not because design does not matter. It is because design is the second decision. The first one is harder, and most firms skip it.
When I interview the clients of a small firm, I ask one question more than any other: what made you choose them? Nobody has ever answered "the typography". They answer with a behavior. She called back the same day. They told us it would cost more than we hoped, before we asked. He said no to half of our brief.
Trust is built from behavior that is repeated until it becomes expected. The job of a brand is to make that behavior visible before a stranger has experienced it.
Trust is not a feeling you create. It is a decision you make first, then let people see.
So the first decision is not "what should we look like". It is "what will we always do, even when it costs us". A financial firm that always shows the fee first. An architect who designs for resale. A roaster who will not ship a bag older than four days.
Each of these is a constraint. That is the point. A promise that costs you nothing is a promise anyone can make.
Once the decision exists, design gets easier, not harder. You need fewer elements, because there is less to say. In practice, that means:
If you remember one thing from this talk, make it this. Do not ask your designer to make you look trustworthy. Decide what you will always do, and ask them to make that impossible to miss.
Essay6 min read
Before you decide what your brand includes, draw the edge of what it does not. The shape you get is smaller, and much easier to trust.
Every project in my studio starts the same way. A sheet of paper, a pencil, and a single bracket drawn in the middle of the page: a line with two short legs, open at the bottom. Then I ask the founder what goes inside it.
It sounds like a design exercise. It is really a decision exercise, and it usually takes the full two hours.
Most brand workshops start with lists. Values, strengths, audiences, adjectives. Lists only grow. Every person in the room adds something, nobody removes anything, and the result is a brand that is "innovative, personal, rigorous and fun", which is to say nothing in particular.
An edge works the other way. A bracket has limited room. To put something inside it, you have to decide what stays outside.
A brand is defined less by what it includes than by what it is willing to leave out.
You can do this alone in an afternoon. It works best on paper, with a pencil you are allowed to erase.
The third line is the one that matters. If you cannot name work you would refuse, the bracket is still decoration.
Firms that have drawn the edge write shorter proposals and say no faster. Their websites get smaller. Their designers stop asking for "a bit more personality", because the personality is now a decision rather than a mood.
The bracket on this website is a reminder of that first sheet of paper. It frames the portrait on the homepage for the same reason: everything inside it is a choice.
Essay5 min read
A practical method for cutting your firm's introduction from a paragraph to a sentence that a client will repeat without being asked.
Read the first paragraph of your website out loud. Then imagine one of your clients describing you to a friend over dinner. If the two sound nothing alike, your introduction is written for you, not for them.
Here is the method I use in every sprint to close that gap. It takes one index card and about an hour.
Collect the exact phrases clients have used about you: in emails, reviews, thank-you notes, the end of a call. Not your summary of what they meant. Their words, with their grammar.
You will notice that clients rarely use adjectives. They describe things you did. "She told us not to hire her yet." "They sent the drawings a week early."
If a sentence would still be true of your competitor, it is not about you.
Write the survivor on an index card in pen. If it does not fit on the card, it is still a paragraph. Keep cutting until it does, then read it to someone who does not know your firm and ask them to repeat it back.
When they can, without looking, you have a sentence. Put it at the top of your homepage, in the first line of your proposal and at the start of your next first meeting. Then stop rewriting it for at least a year.
I am a brand strategist and designer. I work with independent firms whose founders are still the reason clients say yes.
I spent eight years at two identity agencies in Copenhagen and New York, designing for companies large enough to have a brand department. The work was good. It rarely changed how a client felt about the company, because nobody had decided what the company stood for.
In 2015 I moved to the Hudson Valley and went independent to work the other way round: the decision first, then the design. Today I run two sprints a quarter and one identity system at a time, from a small studio in Kingston and on site with clients.
A few honest sentences are more useful than a polished brief. I read every message myself and reply within two working days.
Your note about your project is ready for Tomas. Expect a reply within two working days, usually with two or three questions and a suggested time for a thirty-minute call.
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Write to . Tomas Reinholt Studio LLC, 14 Orchard Row, Studio 3, Kingston, NY 12401.
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