Most companies don't need more design. They need better decisions about design — where it creates value, where it's being wasted, and what it should be doing that nobody has thought to ask it to do.
That's what a design advisor does. Not execute. Not produce deliverables. But sit with the leadership team and bring clarity to the decisions that determine whether a company's products, positioning, and brand cohere into something the market actually values.
I work as an ongoing advisor to CEOs, founders, and leadership teams at product companies. The relationship is flexible — sometimes it's a regular cadence of working sessions, sometimes it's a call before a critical decision, sometimes it's a deep dive into a specific challenge. The constant is that you have someone in the room whose only job is to see the full picture and tell you the truth about what design can and should be doing for your business.
The work typically touches several areas. Product strategy — which products to develop, which to retire, how the portfolio tells a coherent story. Brand positioning — not the logo or the campaign, but how the market perceives you based on what you build and how you present it. Organizational alignment — whether your team is structured to execute on design at the level your strategy requires. And opportunity discovery — where the white space is, what the market is ready for, what your competitors have missed.
I also come with a bench of relationships across disciplines — engineering, manufacturing, materials science, brand strategy — that I can bring to the table when the work requires it. I'm not an agency. But I can assemble the right people for the right moment.
This tends to work well for companies at inflection points. A new product category. A repositioning. A leadership transition. A moment where the stakes are high enough that the quality of the design thinking in the room will determine the outcome.
Every advisory engagement begins with a diagnostic — a structured process of opportunity discovery that maps where design is creating value, where it's leaking it, and where the most significant opportunities lie. This becomes the foundation for everything that follows, whether we continue working together or not.
If you're leading a product company and want design thinking at the level of your most consequential decisions, I'd welcome a conversation.
studio@toddbracher.com
— Todd Bracher
