Invisible design

I don't have a beautiful portfolio.

It's not full of well crafted, glamorous, impeccably designed artifacts. Why? Because I specialize in chaos. I live in the thrill of spinning multiple pies and building bridges between business and design. Most of my work is never seen, but often felt. My teams and I are the glue the binds together insights and data to realized implementations. We are a coupling of actionable strategy, vision, and experience.

I am invisible. And if I continue to be good at my job it should stay that way. I whisper in the ears of executives, helping companies make decisions that leave them more profitable, desirable, and competitive. I have helped build experimental technologies and experiential experiences. Designers like me swirl like a whirling dervish between silos and weave webs between teams and their executive leadership. We create mechanisms for communication and activation. We are culture, design, products, services, and experiences combined.

We build confidence in companies to allow them to plan further into the future with our outcomes.

I build invisible design. You know it's there because you can always feel when it's working because you love the experience, or when it isn't because you're don't. But you can't see it.

My portfolio is made up of thousands of little bits of research and strategies, concepts and maps, and execution plans. It's the thousands of meetings I take, workshops I facilitate, words I craft, and advising I have provided that has built my beautifully well crafted portfolio that I hold in my mind.

What we do is not always tangible, because the experiences you enjoy are built on validating hours of research, coaching talent, educating clients, and building well-crafted narratives and business cases. It's the 60 meeting work-weeks or 8 hour working sessions. It's the tossing and turning all night while my brain reimagines the concepts or works through complex obstacles that fill every project in my mind-folio.

Somedays I wish I had a beautifully designed, animated, flashy website to show, instead I have the quiet successes of various companies whom I have shed sweat and tears for, the network of quiet professionals with shared confidences.

I hope you continue to enjoy my invisible portfolio made up of all of my invisible designs. I don't put pen to the paper these days, but I promise you will know my work when you feel it.

-Stephanie Krell, The Invisible Designer