The project may start with today. My thinking doesn’t stop there.
Hello, I’m Cindy Parwono, a Creative Director and strategist with a habit of looking beyond the project in front of me.
A website, a campaign, a brand refresh. These things have a curious habit of arriving as tidy little assignments and then revealing considerably larger ambitions. Before long, I’m wondering where the business is headed, what it might need in three, five or ten years, and what else it could be doing, selling or saying.
That curiosity has led me well beyond the usual borders of design. I’ve helped aging brands find their footing again, turned creative ideas into new sources of revenue, taught clients how to use the things we built, and stayed around long enough to see some of those businesses grow in directions none of us could have neatly predicted at the beginning.
I’ve been at this for more than 20 years, beginning as a graphic designer, growing into an art director, and eventually finding that “designer” no longer quite covered what I was doing. Somewhere along the way, I had wandered into business strategy, technology, client growth, team leadership and the rather important question of what happens after the work goes out the door.
I’ve had the good fortune to work with businesses large and small, including Southern California Edison, UCLA, Ventura Foods, Sysco, UC Berkeley, Fox Interactive, Capcom, Activision, Allergan, Tutor Perini, and the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association.
If you are an agency:
You get a creative who thinks beyond the creative. I want to know how your client’s business works, where it’s going, and whether the thing they’ve asked us to make is actually the thing that will get them there.
I’m curious by nature, so I tend to wander into marketing, technology, backend systems, new tools and the occasional revenue opportunity hiding in plain sight. I work comfortably between clients, creatives and developers, translating when necessary and asking an indecent number of questions when useful.
I also like growing people. I’ve mentored interns and junior designers not only in becoming better designers, but in listening to clients, defending their thinking and eventually becoming people who can lead the room themselves.
My goal is to be a second strategic mind for the agency: helping solve the right problems, strengthen client relationships and find reasons for good clients to keep coming back.
If you are a founder or a business owner:
We start with your vision, the heart of the business. Who are you serving? What are you building? Where do you want to be in three, five, even ten years? Then we work backward, breaking that distant ambition into a 12-month plan, and from there into monthly steps. A ten-year goal can loom rather impressively in the distance. It becomes much friendlier once we figure out what needs to happen this month. Then we build creatives that aligns with where you are going, not just where you are now.
We also build for resilience. Remember COVID? The world shifts. Businesses change. What we build should be flexible enough to change with them.
If you’re looking for a designer who thinks beyond the surface — someone who can create, plan, collaborate, and help you move your business forward — I’d love to connect.
