i DID - History of RED-i Design

Companies largely depend on talented graphic designers to keep them up to date and interested in new ideas and trends that help favourably position their brands and corporate images in a crowded market. And ironically, astute business skills are not often considered to be the driving force behind a graphic design company’s success. For Belinda and Paul Vesey-Brown, the quantum leap from being a self described ‘left-sided creatives’ to a ‘right-sided’ business entrepreneurs has helped them turn a small cottage business into an ambitious business expansion model which, in 2007, realised its first goal – to secure two major government tenders for preferred supplier graphic design services. 

In just seven years Belinda has gone from working two days a week as a freelance designer to overseeing a busy commercial design studio with a team of twelve. When Belinda took the brave step to leave full time employment with her former employer in March 2002, she invested $10,000 of her own money into the business and secured a government grant to provide her with the sales and business skills she needed to launch her business to the corporate world.  

Armed with a business plan and big ideas, Belinda hired her first full time employee just 12 months later. A third member joined the team in March the following year, followed by Paul in 2006 to take over as Creative Director so that Belinda could focus on the business development.

Today, Paul and Belinda’s client base is diverse, with more than 150 accounts including city councils, state government, entrepreneurs and small to medium businesses across three Australian states including two international clients. RED-i Design has a culture and flair that is distinct and which adds to the company’s unique appeal. RED-i Design’s collective talents are applied to corporate identity and consumer packaging design, digital media and print production. 

Belinda and Paul credit their rapid business growth to taking a high-level view of all of their goals and priorities and then putting strategies in place to achieve them. With their roadmap in place, Belinda and Paul have their focus firmly set on the big picture goal: by 2017 they will have launched a full service design business that provides interior, landscape and brand communications services to companies so that every touch point of the business has been 'i-Designed'. They have identified a real gap in the market for synergistic design services which they believe would truly visualise a company’s brand identity - from office fit out to landscape and streetscape design, to marketing collateral. See Vision for more details.

In the words of Arthur Ashe, “success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” RED-i Design is the story of one young couples determination and pursuit of their goals and achieving wins one at a time. Time will tell how far they can take the “i Design” empire.

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