Phoebe leads brand design across New+Improved’s ventures, working with founders from the earliest stages to shape how a company shows up in the world. Her role sits at the intersection of strategy and craft, helping translate early thinking into clear direction, then building brand systems that can evolve alongside the product and the company as it grows and scales.
With deep experience across startups and high-growth companies, Phoebe and her team have helped shape some of the most recognisable brands in the ANZ startup ecosystem. Her work combines strategic thinking with creative execution, helping founders build brands that are as compelling as the products behind them. For Phoebe, brand and design aren't a final layer but something embedded in how a company thinks, behaves, and communicates. Her focus is on creating design systems and identities that give early teams clarity, direction and distinctiveness in a market where all of these are getting harder.
Can you explain how you distinguish between brand and design, and where and how they intersect?
Design is the act of creation.
Design is everything!
Founders are designers too, because they are making something new that doesn’t already exist. Brand Design is the same, but it has a different output.
There are many design disciplines: fashion, product, architecture and industrial. Brand Design is its own unique discipline, where it brings together strategy (what it is you’re doing and why should people care), and then visualising the emotion of what you stand for and what others should believe in you.
It’s actually quite hard ;)
What separates the brands people remember from the ones they forget?
In an AI world where making things is much easier for the average Joe, it’s not enough to be a ‘contemporary’ or ‘modern’ brand (although in my view it’s never been enough).
This is great for the design industry because ideas and having a strong point of view still matter the most for your brand, and this is what people remember.
Why does brand matter earlier than many founders think?
Brand isn’t just how you look, it's what you do.
In the early days, brand is just as important in gaining new customers as it is an internal compass for the team steering it. Everything from telling your story with conviction in an investor deck, to the first dashboard of your product that customers will experience. How you do all of these aspects is your brand and this is what people will be buying into, or not.
Once you have validated a problem space, you may have a great product, but if you can’t tell the story and have people buy into what you do, then the likelihood of success is slimmer.
Where do you start when you have a blank slate for a New+Improved venture?
We don’t start thinking about the creative strategy and brand identity until there’s clarity on product direction and who the early customers will be, so we know who we need to be speaking to, and what story we are telling.
Usually the first and most important element to consider is a name.
It is the shortest brand story, when designed right, that helps a startup stand out in the very early stages when you’re selling the product and story to investors and customers alike.
And then when we start the design process, there are still many unknowns with a company being at such an early stage. In some cases the founding team who take it to market may not even be fully established yet, but there are enough ingredients to form a view of where the product is going, and we have a product prototype that’s been tested with early cohorts so we know the story that we want to be told.
Our design team at Previously Unavailable will collaborate early on with the team and Simon Pound (one of our partners of New+Improved) on creative strategy to set the direction for design. And then we build!
How do you think about designing a brand that can evolve as a company grows and sees rapid product iteration?
The advantage to creating any brand identity early on is being able to embed the thinking and systems with the founders and first hires, who can then continue to pass on the original essence of the brand as they grow and scale.
It can be difficult to maintain a high level of craft in the execution of design in the early days when a brand design hire isn’t (understandably) a priority off the bat. We usually design the first assets to keep the team going, and stay as close as we can to the ventures before they hire a designer in-house.
Once we’ve cracked the core identity idea, we approach the design system with a lens of how it can be as robust, yet flexible, as possible. A toolkit of parts that are easy enough to execute in the early days, but then equally, have enough stretch for a designer to pick up and amplify further as the product and positioning naturally evolve.
We will visualise as many possibilities of the brand identity initially so that there is a good foundation to build upon. Ideally is a great case study for this, with Madison Ford as their lead brand designer really enriching what we had originally created.
How is AI changing the role of design teams and creative work?
With the lens of brand design (rather than product), I do wonder whether AI has changed the perception of what design is and what’s possible, more than the actual role of design and how we work day to day.
Outside of the production aspect of brand design, to do truly great work, there’s not a lot of the process that we can productise such as developing a point of view, judgement, taste.
There are tools like Figma that have AI plug-ins to make prototyping, doing concept imagery and scrappy work at pace, and that’s really satisfying to be able to see in real time. It means in some cases that we can visualise complex things more realistically, and faster, and that can be a good thing when you’re selling work to clients.
AI can give the impression that everything design related is easy to produce, to a high standard which isn’t the case for brand design work (yet? Or ever?). Brand design relies on much more in the long term than just a seemingly polished output.
Does AI make having a strong brand more important or less important?
More important.
AI has made prototyping websites and digital outputs so much easier (which is amazing), but it means we’re in another era of ‘blanding’, especially in the technology B2B space.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s easy for nearly anyone to create something that feels ‘contemporary’. The table stakes are higher, so the brand identity and behaviours of the brand need to work hard.
You need all things firing together simultaneously. Business strategy, creative strategy, and a strong visual metaphor to lean into unapologetically.
The great thing about AI in the world of design and creativity is that the people with the ideas are now closer to the production of them.
What should founders or teams prioritise when they have limited resources and/or budget for design?
Timing is always tricky with a startup and utilising your capital in the best way.
I wouldn’t consider a full brand identity process until your product is in customers' hands and creating real traction. If anything, it’s better to start off with a low-fi brand and make sure the product is solving an actual problem and that people would pay for it.
As I mentioned earlier, I’d start off by focusing on a great name, and then go from there.
At Previously Unavailable, and through N+I Ventures, we’ve developed a model that uses equity to bring high-fidelity strategy and design into early-stage startups much earlier in their journey. It’s an approach more companies could consider when taking on meaningful creative work without significant upfront cash outlay.
That doesn’t make it any less valuable or expensive.
It remains an investment, whether paid in cash or equity. The real strength of equity is that it aligns creative and founding teams around a shared outcome, and fosters deeper partnerships for greater long-term value.
It changes the dynamic from being purely a creative supplier to an actual partner, and being just as invested in the success and ambition of the business as anyone else on the cap table.
What are the biggest design mistakes founders or teams make in the early stages?
I think an innocent mistake of founders that haven’t been through a brand process before is thinking design is the wrapper you add on at the end, rather than something that has longevity and is embedded more deeply and strategically into the company.
Brand Design isn’t just the logo (although a great logo is one of the most powerful components), it's what your story is, what you stand for and why people should care about what you’re doing.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Nothing flashy comes to mind, but one of my old bosses would always talk about the act of ‘showing up’.
Sometimes you might be nervous for a presentation or anticipating a hard conversation, or you may be struggling to crack an idea, but the best thing to do is tackle it head on, show up and be present. Embrace what the day holds (it may surprise you and be better than expected) and just simply keep going.
I often think about how to build a sustainable practice over time, and enjoy the act of creation, all the weird stuff that happens in between. Almost like an artist who continues to paint and make every day until something resolves.
We hope you enjoyed learning more about how Phoebe thinks about brand design, and about Phoebe herself. Connect with Phoebe here!
