Clear Identity is a boutique studio offering
agency quality business strategy, graphic design
and branding to small business.

 

Karoline Cumming established Clear Identity in 2004.
We started out as a boutique graphic design studio, but since then we’ve grown,
our clients have grown and our reputation has grown.

What remains the same is our dedication to providing great design, as well as the clever thinking, plain-english marketing and business advice that our clients value the most.

Karoline came from an Advertising Agency background (starting out as a Junior Designer, then quickly working up the ranks to Art Director and then Co-Agency Manager), and quickly realised that small businesses desperately needed the ability to access high quality design as well as high quality, real-world marketing advice.

Generally speaking, the choices for small businesses are limited to freelance graphic designers or large studios / full-service advertising agencies:

Freelancers create good design but often lack strong marketing skills.
Often they aren’t available at the hours their clients need and clients complain that they need to tell their freelancer exactly what they need the project to look like. 

Larger studios and advertising agencies have a larger staff and longer communication chain.
They’re often rigid in their processes and look to chase bigger clients. Smaller clients complain about feeling like the “small fish in a big pond”: missing out on the attention they want while paying a high price for the marketing and design services.

Small and medium businesses tend to operate in cluttered markets where there are many similar businesses in the same space, and standing out from the crowd is hard to do. Traditional text-book marketing or one-size-fits-all formulas just don’t work for small business.  Each small business is as unique as its owner, and true results come from designing marketing tools and materials that are tailored to that business.

Most of our clients are regular, repeat clients, with whom we’ve developed strong relationships based on trust and respect. New clients tend to be referrals from existing ones.  To us, that is the greatest compliment – that our clients would go out and recommend us to someone else means we’re making them happy, and doing our job well.

 

Karoline Cumming

DIRECTOR

I figured there had to be a better solution – where small and medium businesses could access high quality, professional design AND the real world marketing expertise…
That’s why I started Clear Identity.
I knew I could offer something that few other graphic designer studios could.

Karoline has always been creative at heart. Jokingly we call her the "colouring in department", but spend an hour with her talking business and you'll soon realise there is much more to her than her natural creative talent!

With over 15 years in business, and having worked with hundreds of small business owners, she has honed her in-born ability to see your business as a whole and understand your unique strengths and issues. She's a natural problem-solver, and can cut to the heart of the matter quickly and determine exactly what needs to be done to change it.

In her spare time, you'll find Karoline stretching her creative wings as an artist; creating one-of-a-kind semiprecious gemstone, silver, glass and polymer clay jewellery as well as textile and mixed media artworks.

You can find her artwork at karoline.com.au, on Facebook and Instagram.

Karoline with our furry studio managers - Poppy the long hair Chihuahua (mischief maker) and Maxi the Maltese x Jack Russell (mummy's boy)

Karoline with our furry studio managers - Poppy the long hair Chihuahua (mischief maker) and Maxi the Maltese x Jack Russell (mummy's boy)