Meet Mindful & Good: a Way of Being & a Brand

‘If you’re passionate and purposeful about something, drive that home; the money will come.’ That’s Rachel Martin, Founder and Design Director of Mindful & Good, a socially conscious design studio committed to honest, effective and stunning creativity that ignites positive change.

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Mindful & Good has a special eye and focus towards serving sustainable, natural, fair trade, organic and socially conscious businesses from a variety of industries. It’s a serious need that’s become more of a norm for companies of all sizes and impacts over the last five years.

Martin’s core strength is activated when she collaborates with clients who align to her values and the firm’s purpose. It’s a way of being and connecting with people that have been a part of who Martin is as a designer and a leader for the last 20 years.

Martin started her career in advertising at a large, well-known agency in New York City where she designed campaigns for some of the world’s most recognized brands. It was a fast-paced and super-charged professional life; Martin remembers ‘cranking’ out an idea to meet a deadline. It was while working on a campaign for a men’s razor that she hit a breaking point. “It dawned on me that we were in a tizzy to be creative, to meet a deadline, to make consumers buy, buy, buy,” she recalled recently. “We were trying desperately hard to market and sell products to people who didn’t need more stuff.”

Martin knew at that moment - consumers didn’t need more stuff; they needed sustainability built-in.

She understood that realization on a deeper level as designer, communicator, and thoughtful leader. That aha! moment created a shift in not only where she worked, but also how she worked. She left the large agency to work for a family-run business with values and principles that aligned more to hers. It was the beginning of a professional journey to figure out how to do better.

Martin channeled that sense of purpose into her own agency which she launched in 2000, first under her own name. In 2020, the agency underwent a strategic rebrand in storytelling and visual assets; she also changed the name to reflect her design philosophy and overall sense of purpose - Mindful & Good.

Today, Mindful & Good serves as both design eye and design thinker. A testament to her early-career realization, Martin is driven not to sell more stuff - but, instead, to design a better process collaboratively with clients. It’s work that is equal parts purpose, passion, and profit - but one where passion and purpose lead. That formula is creating success for her clients. A North Carolina elderberry syrup saw a 200% increase from a rebrand with Mindful & Good. The rebrand led to more strategic marketing efforts for wholesale and online products. What led the way there though was the thinking and the design. Martin partnered with the founder to help design a look, feel, and story for a more mainstream audience - but also one that put the founder’s health-conscious purpose and philosophy front and center, for all the right reasons.

In this sense, Martin is a design philosopher, examining holistically how to take an idea to the next level in a conscious, sustainable, and purpose-propelled way.

Here’s how she does it.

ALIGN WITH THE RIGHT CLIENTS

After 20 years in the industry, there’s no doubt - the need for this level of thought and design exists. The question becomes how to qualify and vet customers well for holistic alignment across everything from values to values. That process starts with communication.

For Martin, it’s about making sure a potential client is in it for the right reasons. To find that out, she goes through a list of strategic questions with every client to see how and where they see eye-to-eye.

Because of the nature of this work, many of Martin’s clients come from relationships or partnerships who align philosophically. In other cases, they’re people or businesses who have followed Martin and the firm for years. In both cases, it’s Martin’s communication - about her values, her philosophy, her work - that is often the impetus of these client relationships.

PLANET x PROFIT x PURPOSE x PASSION

“Five years ago, sustainable design wasn’t the same; it was a very niche thing; today, it’s become the norm now which is why a lot of businesses - from Fortune 100 to more regional brands - are hiring experts and partners in this field,” Martin shares. “What that means now is that, because this space is becoming more crowded, I need to believe in you as a product or a cause even more today to really get behind it.”

As both designer and thinker, Martin is conscious of the fact that products and services are direct reflections of the leaders and teams building them. As a consumer, she knows she has to believe in it, use it, make it a part of her life, as well. When you combine those, you have a design firm that must align holistically with clients and their respective work.

It’s a philosophy that led Martin to the rebrand in 2020, and it’s how she designs her own communication. The Mindful & Good website experience begins immediately with a video that’s a manifesto, Martin’s philosophy, when it comes to design and sustainability, life and people.

TRUST YOUR GUT

A lot of this work is gut intuition done right. Martin notes that she always makes decisions based on one important question. “I sometimes ask myself, ‘Would I do this for free because I really believe in them or this cause or product?’” She adds.

It’s good proof that how we talk to ourselves - or our own higher selves and purposes - that helps us to align with the right partners, people, and projects.

If we’ve learned anything from Rachel Martin and Mindful & Good, it’s this - when we make the choice to lead as both creative designer and creative thinker, we propel purposes in ways that are not only mindful and good, but also longstanding and sustainable.

“It’s a big choice; and it’s not convenient. You have to be able to see not only the bigger, deeper issues involved in a choice like this, but also the long-term investment of it,” she says.

It’s in that place that ways of being and thinking become brands.