Visibility Is a Strange Currency

When visibility moves before recognition

One thing no one really prepares you for when you work for yourself is how strange visibility can be.

People talk about it like a straight line. Do good work. Get noticed. Opportunities appear. Momentum builds.

That’s not what it actually looks like.

Visibility moves in strange directions. Sometimes people far away see the signal before the people closest to you. Sometimes the internet notices something your own city barely registers. And sometimes both things happen at the same time.

That’s roughly where I find myself right now.

A few years ago I started putting work and ideas out into the world more intentionally. Eventually some of that caught Adobe’s attention. I was invited onto Adobe Live, which later led to speaking at Adobe MAX. Through those platforms I started interacting with people from all over the world who were genuinely interested in the work and the thinking behind it.

When I went to MAX, people recognized me from Adobe Live. They already knew the conversations and the projects.

Meanwhile, back home, the signal landed much more quietly.

That contrast is strange to experience in real time. Globally, the work was circulating. Locally, it sometimes felt like it barely existed.

Visibility and recognition are not the same thing.

The problem with partial visibility

The bigger issue is what happens once visibility starts spreading.

People rarely see the full picture. They see fragments.

Some people know me as the founder of the Ottawa Design Club. Others recognize my name from Adobe Live. Some know the zines. Others have only seen design work I’ve shared online.

Each group sees a different version of the same story.

Those fragments slowly become the narrative people build around you. If someone only knows the Ottawa Design Club, they assume community organizing is the core of the work. If they only know Adobe Live, they see a speaker. If they only know the zines, they think publishing is the center of it.

All of those things are real. None of them are the full picture.

Right now I’m in what I’d call a visibility transition. The work is visible, but the story around it is still fragmented.

The messaging problem

This is where messaging becomes brutally important.

Visibility alone doesn’t control how people understand your work. It only tells them that you exist. If the story isn’t clear, people will build their own version of it.

That’s exactly the tension I’m navigating right now.

The Ottawa Design Club created community and momentum. Adobe Live created global visibility. The zines opened doors into conversations around publishing and culture. All of those things helped move the work forward.

But momentum doesn’t always point in the direction you want your career to go next. Because the core of what I actually do is very simple. I design brands for communities. Sometimes that becomes an event identity. Sometimes a publication. Sometimes a cultural initiative that brings people together around an idea.

The Ottawa Design Club was one expression of that thinking. The zines were another. The talks and workshops are another.

They all come from the same place. The outside world doesn’t automatically connect those dots.

The strange middle

Right now feels like a strange middle point.

The work has momentum. Opportunities are appearing. People recognize pieces of what I do. But very few people see the whole picture.

Some know the community projects but not the design practice. Others know the design work but have no idea about the cultural side of it. Some know the zines but don’t know the strategy behind them.

None of that is wrong. It just means the narrative is still forming. And solving that for yourself is far harder than solving it for a client.

When you work on someone else’s brand, the gaps are obvious. You can see where the message drifts or where the signal is unclear.

When it’s your own work, you’re standing inside the system instead of observing it from the outside. That makes the blind spots harder to see.

What I’m doing about it

So right now I’m looking at my own work the same way I would look at a client’s.

What are people actually seeing? What are they missing? Which signals are helping the story, and which ones are pulling attention somewhere else?

Because visibility isn’t the goal.

Alignment is.

I want the work to point clearly toward what I actually do best: building strong brands for communities. The kind of work that lives in cultural spaces, events, publications, and ideas that bring people together.

The Ottawa Design Club helped build that momentum. Adobe Live amplified it. The zines pushed it further.

But those things are chapters, not the headline.

Right now the work is making sure the headline is clear.

Because visibility without direction is just noise. And strategy exists to make sure the signal points exactly where you want it to go.