ABOUT
The Why
Carrie’s Story
Your Questions
THE WHY
I’ve spent the past twenty-five years helping people who defy easy labels show up with clarity, edge, and confidence. Artists. Psychics. Musicians. Intuitives. People who have something real to offer, but no interest in playing the loudest, slickest game on the internet.
The Brand Dossier is where I share the tools, questions, and creative frameworks I’ve used along the way. It’s not a system. It’s not a course. It’s a companion for people who are finally ready to show up fully—and want a second brain, sharp eye, or steady hand on the wheel.
Everything you need to shape your brand —nothing you don’t.
This isn’t a funnel. It’s not a ten-step course to six-figure scale.
The ones who care more about alignment than algorithms.
The Brand Dossier is where I’ve gathered the tools, prompts, frameworks, and stories I’ve used to help people like you launch brands, clarify their presence, and take their work more seriously—so the world can, too.
For over two decades, I’ve helped people shape what they’re offering into something that feels whole and credible. I’ve worked with artists, founders, intuitives, and creative professionals to build brands.
ABOUT CARRIE FORD HILLIKER
I’m a designer, strategist, photographer and writer. For nearly three decades I’ve been working with artists in creative industries like fashion, entertainment, music, and the arts.
The Brand Dossier has been in my Notes app for way too long.
My education was in writing, history and documentary photography. The wild west of the late 90s internet was vibrant, exciting and scooped me right up. After a summer internship and a lot of late nights, by twenty I was a self-taught web designer.
As one of the few native web designers banging around back then, I was hired as the first Senior Interactive Art Director at Havas Worldwide Chicago in the early 2000s. In those days, wireframes were sketched on napkins at lunch and every site was hand-coded.
After a few years in the agency world of Chicago, I headed to Los Angeles where I found opportunities in creative leadership at Tribune Media and Disney Interactive.
In 2008, I started my studio, FordVisuals. Since then, I’ve met and worked with hundreds of people, from corporate and nonprofit, to start ups and independent creatives.
Carrie is based in Chicago with her daughter and animals. She still has a 213 area code.
WFH 2004
YOUR QUESTIONS
Who’s behind The Brand Dossier.
Just me.
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How is this different from FordVisuals?
FordVisuals is my primary business, the mother of it all. The one that sort of sits back and handles everything, can take on any size client, loves a big project she can sink her teeth into. Think big brands with big budgets, high profile projects, timelines that often stretch off into the distance.
The Brand Dossier is specifically for small businesses that have urgent puzzles to solve and a defined budget. Just like a larger corporate clients, they need consistent coherent branding to move the needle. We’ll look at the entire scope of your brand and its ecosystem, from website to social, email to collateral.
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Why are you doing this and why is it needed?
I’ve been working with brands of all sizes for over 25 years. Small businesses and organizations are my favorites to work with because the clients are passionate and need work done quickly. I’ve found over the years that there aren’t many reliable, cost-effective, and aesthetically on point solutions for brands that don’t need a full studio experience.
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Why do you move so fast?
It’s fun. I like to move quickly. Blame it on a 90s ADD diagnosis, an air sign mind or just my nature, but I move fast. It’s fun and satisfying and rewarding for everyone to see solutions come to light so quickly.
There aren’t many design and branding studios that hit the sweet spot for small often one-person businesses. They end up with band-aid fixes and using multiple people to help with their needs (logo, website, ecommerce, social, email, event prep, collateral) which results in scattershot branding and a less-than-polished presentation to your clients and customers.
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Any loftier reasons behidn all of this?
Yep. I believe in small businesses. I’m the granddaughter of a solo mom with just a high school education who built a business up from scratch in a small midwestern town while raising my Dad. She often had many jobs at a time, including selling encyclopedias door to door, working in a dress shop and renting out rooms in their tiny house to boarders and sleeping in the kitchen to give up her room. When she was in her 50s she started selling real estate in her tiny town and grew her own business so she was able to support herself through retirement and beyond. More importantly, I’ve never heard a bad word spoken about her. Everyone in town knew her not only because she could chat for hours and remembered all the details about your life, but because she was fair and kind. She was always there to help, and in turn was treated with kindness by her community. As a widowed single mom myself, I’m honored that my life has paralelled hers in so many ways, and so grateful that I can look to her life as guidance and inspiration.
I also believe that great design and branding can dramatically change the outcome for brands, and I want to make that as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, especially women, the queer community and people of color. There’s no reason for gatekeeping in design. Everyone benefits from great design.
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Oftentimes
We learn about your immediate needs, longer term goals, and current state of your brand.
We make a recommendation within your budget in order to address these goals, but also make suggestions and recommendations on what else you can do. That doesn’t mean you have to do it with us - but we’ll give you recommendations
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Do you do anything behind just giving me design files?
Various web platforms. There are a lot and they’re changing and growing rapidly. I’ve used them all. We’ll talk it through and recommend the one that’s best for you.
Non-mainstream resources for images, typography and graphic elements. We use the big houses, too, but focus on supporting smaller, boutique businesses that are POC, queer and women-owned.
Organization of all your stuff. Where’s the favicon? The transparent logo? Which one am I using on IG?
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What are some common complaints from people who are trying to find a person to help with web design and this sort of thing?
—They only do one thing so I still need to hire a bunch of other people. This feels like a patchwork.
Everything they do is confusing
The pricing is vague.
I feel like I have to manage the project and I don’t have time.
They’re good at one thing but they have no vision for the bigger picture.
After all this I have more to do, a less coherent, clear consistent mesage and a brand that I just don’t feel good about. That leaves me spending too much mental time on things I don’t specialize in and I literally don’t ahve time. So it all remains undone and drives me crazy because it sits parked on my to do list. And I know once it’s live it’ll be so valuable. It’s dead weight and hemmorages money.