Growing brands from the perspective of an ex-brand founder with isabella giancarlo of TART studio
On not having a reputation strategy, the metamorphosis of your own brand, and the key to staying buoyant
Growing XYZ is the series where I ask brilliant one person businesses about their definition of successful growth and how they are bringing it to life.
This week is the creative genius isabella giancarlo, founder of TART studio, who I had the absolute pleasure of getting to know earlier this year when they took part in my Creative Growth Strategy Sprint. I especially love how isabella speaks to the tension of growing an agency with a distinct style while continuing to make client work with its own clear ID.
Hope you enjoy our convo as much as I did <3
Matilda x
Hello! Please give us an intro into you and your work.
Ciaoooo! I’m isabella, a brand designer, strategist, and founder of TART, a branding and creative studio. TART’s sweet spot is helping people building purpose-led brands define their flavor — the distinct voice, style, and presence that sets them apart.
In 2024, after a decade in NYC, I followed a pandemic-born love for Italian and a craving for a more creative, textured life, and moved to Rome, Italy. Outside of work, in the last month, you could have found me singing Loveshack at karaoke, hand-building ceramics, visiting the sheep in Caffarella, eating arancini in Sicily, or seeing an experimental French film at Villa Medici.
You’ve worked on both sides of the table as an agency person helping brands find their identity, and as a co-founder of gender neutral makeup brand Fluide. How did being a founder change the way you think about branding work?
Working on branding and identity in the hospitality space early in my career taught me that branding goes wayyy beyond a logo. Every touchpoint a client interacts with speaks to and reinforces a brand — the scent in the hotel lobby, the curation of the mini fridge. Even if your company exists solely online, a successful, compelling brand is world-building.
After working with some big, established brands where creativity had… let’s say… limits, co-founding Fluide came with a huge sense of freedom. Fluide began with the question: What does a world centered on queer joy and gender expansiveness look like? Working around that question informed everything we did: the branding and visual identity, of course, but also our product names (all named after queer spaces), who we collaborated with, who we hired. In 2017, Fluide radically diverged from the way LGBTQ folks were represented (or not represented) in the beauty landscape and I think that came from having a clear vision at the center, rather than reverse-engineering values to justify a product.
Being a founder made it clear that when you have clarity around the world you’re trying to build, everything else follows. At TART, that means doing both the strategic and the creative work together: getting clear on the foundation first, and then building the brand from there.
TART has a distinct visual styly you describe as “zesty, opinionated, flavorful.” How do you hold onto that identity when you’re working with clients who might want to sand down the edges? On the flip side, how do you make sure that each project retains its individuality?
I’ll admit that I delight in a pun, so defining TART’s style within the world of cooking and flavor always felt right. But more than wordplay, what I love about those three words is that they describe a sensibility rather than a look, one that can stretch to accommodate each client’s specific visual POV.
Getting clearer on who TART is for, and showing up that way in the portfolio and online has luckily meant that the clients who are drawn to us aren’t afraid of standing out.
Our process is super hands-on and is all about drawing out what’s unique to each client (quirks, convictions, core truths) and letting the visual identity evolve from there. That starts with a lengthy onboarding questionnaire and intensive Brand Visioning session to get into the nooks and crannies, helping shape the brand foundation. The aim is always that the end result feels less like something we made, and more like something that could have only ever been theirs.
How do you think about building a reputation and a body of work as a solo studio founder?
Honestly, I feel a little woo-woo about this one in that I don’t really have a reputation strategy so much as a belief that doing really good, thorough, thoughtful work creates its own momentum. Word of mouth is TART’s biggest referral source, and I think that comes from the depth of the process and the time spent getting to know each client. I feel so grateful that the client relationships almost always outlast the initial engagement, with clients returning for additional work or sending folks our way.
Because clients work so intimately with me throughout, it matters that I show up online in a way that gives them a real sense of who I am and my philosophy before we even speak. I’ve always enjoyed writing, so the newsletter has been a space to share my POV through cultural deep dives, behind the scenes, and snippets from my own entrepreneurial journey.
So much of your work is about helping others articulate who they are. What’s the hardest thing about doing that for yourself and your own business?
Last year, TART went through its own metamorphosis.
I used our own client process to approach the studio rebrand and new website (I even wrote about it). Would you guess that I went into it kicking and screaming? So… begs the question: why the resistance?
I said I kept putting it off because I was prioritizing client work. But the truth was that I knew exactly how much time and energy it would take. And while I welcomed the design and website work, what I was really avoiding was the introspective part.
Re/branding, when done well, requires going deep. You have to sit with yourself long enough to pin down who you are, define the world you’re working towards, and decide how to show up. It can be so hard to see ourselves clearly. Comparison, judgment and expectations can show up and muddle things. It’s much easier with support, structure, and a guide.
Making time and space for introspection can be scary and it’s easy (for me!) to invent excuses to put it off, but I’ve found that it’s the only way towards growth, no matter the task.
What does successful growth mean to you today?
Right now, growth means actively tending to curiosity, at my desk and beyond. It looks like partnerships with clients who are building brands that genuinely align with who they are / the world they want to co-create. It looks like a steady stream of podcasts, books, knitting projects, and artist dates (iykyk). It also means making time for workshops and classes, some to enrich my design practice and others to flex my creativity in other directions (like ikebana, ceramics, and poetry) and to give myself the luxury of being a noob.
It also means checking in with myself regularly to make sure I’m walking the talk. I have two notes scribbled under my monitor. One is something my business mentor Holly Howard said:
“if you stay curious, you stay buoyant.”
The other is a fragment from a Michael Pollan interview:
“the sacredness of the everyday.”
Successful growth looks like constantly reaching to embody both.
📨 Broken Growth is an almost weekly newsletter exploring how one person businesses grow creative ecosystems in a world on fire. Written by strategist Matilda Lucy. If you enjoyed reading, share with a friend who would too 😎.