Xelo · Strategic Creative Partner

Let’s find out what’s really there. Then let’s make you visible.

I work with founders and businesses that have something real — but don’t quite know how to make it visible yet.

Your personal brand. Your business. Your design. Your marketing. We start with clarity. Then we build.

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A few things I’ve helped make visible. Drag, scroll, or use the arrows to see more.

The situation

Sometimes your business has moved on. Your brand hasn’t.

Maybe you’ve grown. Changed direction. Got better at what you do. Or what you built simply doesn’t feel like you anymore.

You know there’s more in the business than people can see from the outside. That’s usually where I come in.

I don’t start with a logo or a website. I start with you. I want to understand what you’re building, why it matters to you, where you want to take it — and what’s getting lost between what you know is there and what other people see.

Sometimes the answer is a new brand or website. Sometimes it isn’t. First, let’s find out.

Ways to work together

Start where it makes sense.

Clear starting points. Clear prices. You can see the level of investment before we ever get on a call.

Start with clarity

Clarity Session

One focused 1:1 session to understand what’s really going on, identify the priority and decide what should happen next.

$290 one-time
Start with clarity
Build the foundation

Brand Foundation

Positioning, brand direction and the essential visual identity your business needs to move forward with clarity.

$3,900
Let’s get started
Build the whole thing

Brand + Digital

Strategy, identity and digital presence developed as one coherent system — including website and communication where the project needs them.

$7,500
Let’s lift you up
Keep me around

Creative Partnership

Ongoing strategic and creative support for founders who want an experienced creative mind close to the business — not another agency layer.

Minimum 3 months $1,500 per month
Subscribe & rise

The Creative Partnership isn’t a bucket of unlimited design hours. Once I understand a business, I keep noticing ideas and opportunities beyond the immediate assignment — in brand, communication, customer experience, marketing, digital or AI. That thinking is part of the relationship. Substantial additional production or implementation is scoped separately.

Beyond design

When the brand works, the business behind it should too.

A brand brings people to your door. What happens after that decides whether they stay. Missed calls, slow replies, a customer list nobody follows up on — that’s revenue leaving quietly.

Together with a specialist partner in AI systems and automation, I can extend a project beyond brand and website into the operations that run underneath it.

Your phone is always answered

An AI receptionist takes the call, qualifies the lead and books the appointment. On a job, in a meeting, at 11pm — it doesn’t matter.

The first reply wins

Form submissions and messages get answered in seconds, not hours. Usually before anyone else has even opened them.

Your existing customers, reactivated

The easiest client is one you already had. Automated follow-up brings past customers back and keeps reviews coming in.

Run operations by text

Ask your business a question, trigger an action, delegate a task — without logging into twelve different tools.

Every piece works on its own. We start with the one thing that’s actually costing you — and only build further if it makes sense.

Talk about your operations ↗
The idea behind the work

Inside → Out.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that you can’t fix an unclear business with better design or more marketing.

Before we decide what something should look like — or how we should put it out into the world — we need to understand what it really is.

  • Who are you?
  • What are you really good at?
  • What makes you different?
  • Who do you want to reach?
  • And what should people feel when they meet you or your brand?

Once that’s clear, design becomes much easier. Marketing becomes more focused. And both start working in the same direction — because the outside finally has something real to express.

How we work

Clarity. Direction. Design. Build. Stay.

Five stages —
not a funnel.
Not every project
needs all five.

01 — Clarity

We talk. I ask questions. I listen.

We take things apart, look at what’s really there and find the idea underneath all the ideas. Sometimes that’s all you need.

02 — Direction

Once we know what we’re working with, we decide where to take it.

Positioning. Priorities. Brand direction. Marketing direction. Not everything needs to be done — we figure out what actually matters.

03 — Design

Now we make it visible.

Brand identity, visual language, website and communication grow from the direction we’ve already established. Design isn’t decoration — it has a job to do.

04 — Build

I don’t just hand you a strategy and disappear.

I can take the thinking into execution — hands-on, with modern design tools, AI where it makes sense, and trusted specialists when the project needs them.

05 — Stay

And sometimes, we keep working together.

Once I understand you and your business, I don’t just wait for the next brief. I keep thinking, I see things, I notice opportunities — and I’ll tell you. That’s why some clients stay.

Proof of thinking

Four projects. One way of working.

Open any project below for the full story — from what we found underneath to what we built on top of it.

Anni Roth
Positioning · Brand Direction · Identity · Website
Anni Roth — From expertise to a brand that finally shows it.
View case study ↗
 TejaTec
Positioning · Brand Direction · Visual Identity · Digital
TejaTec — From supplier to partner.
View case study ↗
 Burger Nation
Brand Development · Communication · Marketing
Burger Nation — Building more than a burger brand.
View case study ↗
 The Vortex Core
Brand Identity · Visual Direction
The Vortex Core — A quiet center for a noisy world.
View case study ↗
 Logos & Marks
Selected marks
Logos & Marks — nine marks
View all marks ↗
In their own words

Ask the people who worked with me.

Anni Roth

Wedding planner

She came for design. She got positioning. She raised her prices and kept every client.

“I raised my prices — and kept every client.”
Simon Markus Putz

Simon Markus Putz

Tech founder
“Clear recommendation.”
Xelo and I worked together on my positioning — exactly at the point where you’re too close to your own thing to see it clearly anymore. Xelo’s biggest strength is speed in clarity. He doesn’t need three sessions to get to the core. In the workshop I had several “aha” moments where something that had only been a vague feeling in my head was suddenly laid out clearly on the table. The process was structured, the atmosphere made you open up, and you walk out feeling understood — not pressed into a template. Several designs came out of it, most recently a card design. The quality is top-notch — you can see in every detail how much thought and heart went into it — and the price-to-value ratio is on a level that’s become rare. What I find especially valuable is who Xelo works for: people who don’t want to put on an act. He delivers something that matches who you actually are, instead of whatever currently looks good as a brand. That’s exactly what carries you later in front of clients, because nothing falls apart between how you present yourself and who you actually are.
Xelo, Strategic Creative Partner at Open Spirits Design
Who’s behind this

I’ve been doing this for a while.

I studied graphic design in Germany and have spent more than three decades working across brand design, corporate identity, art direction and digital.

I’ve founded and run design agencies, worked as an art director, and had the opportunity to contribute to projects for organizations including Apple Germany, Bertelsmann and public institutions in Germany and Europe.

One of the more memorable moments was presenting a corporate design direction for DHL with a small agency partnership — directly to a 16-member board at their headquarters. We didn’t get the job. They liked the work, but ultimately chose a larger agency they trusted to handle the European rollout. I still like that story, because experience isn’t just a collection of projects you won.

I’ve also spent a good part of my life making things outside the traditional design world — painting, illustration, tattooing, music. I’ve travelled, lived and worked in different places, watched technology change our profession more than once, and I’m still curious about what comes next.

Today, that includes AI. I use it where it makes the work better, faster, or opens up possibilities we didn’t have before. But I don’t use it to replace thinking, experience or human judgment.

THE TOOLS CHANGED.
THE FUNDAMENTALS DIDN’T.

Apple Germany · Bertelsmann · DHL · European Patent Office · State of North Rhine-Westphalia

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects connected to some remarkable organizations — through my own agencies, agency partnerships and leadership roles within other creative teams. Different times, different roles, different kinds of work.

What matters to me isn’t having big names on a list. It’s what all those years taught me — about people, businesses, ideas, design and what it takes to turn something complex into something people can understand.

More about Xelo ↗
Questions

Practical questions, honestly answered.

No. That’s often the point of the first conversation. You can come with a clear brief, a vague feeling that something isn’t working, or somewhere in between.

No. Sometimes the right answer is much smaller. I don’t believe in rebuilding things just to create a larger project.

Yes. I use AI where it improves the process, expands creative possibilities or makes implementation more efficient. I don’t use it as a substitute for thinking or judgment.

I stay directly involved in the thinking, direction and creative work. When a project needs specialist capabilities — technical implementation, automation or another discipline — I can work with trusted collaborators. One example: together with a specialist partner, I can extend a project into AI systems and automation.

Yes. Some relationships continue as an ongoing Creative Partnership after the initial project. The minimum commitment for that model is three months.

Not sure what you need?

Good.

You don’t need to diagnose the problem before we talk. Tell me what’s going on with the business, where you want to take it and what doesn’t feel right yet. We’ll start there.

Book a free call ↗ sendme@openspiritsdesign.com