From undefined to undeniable:
Lucy’s HIYA VIBES transformation
Lucy Freeman, founder of NextPhase, has spent 17 years inside the creative industries. That’s long enough to watch brilliant women one after another disappear. Through her consultancy, Lucy works with agencies to stop losing senior women through the parenthood transition, and trains women as a pre/postnatal PT on the side. She’s building something that sits smack in the middle of three worlds most people keep carefully separated: agency life, motherhood, and physical strength. Her work asks the question: what if women didn’t have to split themselves into acceptable pieces just to remain employable? And then gets on with answering it.
But before HIYA VIBES, her visual identity wasn’t asking anything at all. It was barely showing up.
Examples of Lucy F’s new images. See more images -> here.
The Challenge
Lucy knew what she stood for. She’d built a whole business around it. What she didn’t have was a visual language to match.
‘I just didn’t have any [visual language], other than a few colours I threw about the place. And I rarely used photos in my LinkedIn posts as I had nothing that felt like it articulated what I wanted to say.’
For someone whose work is about being seen, really seen in all your complexity, that felt like a significant thing to be missing. Her message was sharp, her thinking was clear, but the visuals that were meant to carry that thinking into the world? Absent.
Examples of Lucy F’s new images. See more images -> here.
The Vibe Definition
We started with the Vibe Check, a process designed to pull out what people know intuitively but haven’t yet found words for. For Lucy, it unlocked something.
‘Gosh, such a lovely process to go through. Marianne was able to capture me in ways I haven’t seen before. I’m an orange apparently, fully on board with that. I found it incredibly easy and freeing to answer the questions, and it amazed me that she was able to land on the vibe definition so accurately from what I had written.’
That last part is the one I always hold onto. The Vibe Check works because the answers are already there… in how someone describes their work, their clients, the feeling they want to create. My job is to excavate them, not invent them.
When Lucy saw her Vibe Definition Report for the first time, her response was immediate and unambiguous:
‘It was spot on. I didn’t have any feedback.’
That’s the reaction I live for, the one that sounds like recognition.
The Shoot
Lucy’s visual world needed to do something specific: hold three identities at once without tidying any of them away. The Overlap concept became the emotional spine of her library… a laptop open beside resistance bands, child’s toys drifting into frame, meeting notes cooling beside a half-drunk coffee. Real life, integrated. Not balance, but coexistence.
But honesty has edges. During our pre-shoot call, Lucy wanted to lean heavily towards ‘real’. So we went with on-camera flash, real life props, the full-on aesthetic of mess. Some of the images were almost too real. So in the end we added a set that was much more stylised in order to balance things out.
‘I loved a lot of the images. There were some that may have seemed a bit too “real” and I did worry I might paint a picture of chaos. But I’m so grateful that Marianne created a set that rebalanced things. And I now have a really good sense of what each theme means to me and how I will use them.’
That’s exactly the tension Lucy’s brand lives inside, the beauty of the mess, held with enough intention that it reads as grounded rather than chaotic. We found the line and her library sits right on it.
Examples of Lucy F’s new images. See more images -> here.
The Toolkit
The library always comes with a fully personalised Toolkit that gives you a roadmap on how to use the images without overwhelm. The Toolkit gave Lucy the framework to take her new visual language and actually use it consistently, across LinkedIn, her newsletter, speaker decks, and workshop materials.
When I asked whether she found the Toolkit useful, she replied:
‘Yes, definitely. I’ll go back to it a lot, and try to use the recommendations so my overall look is cohesive.’
For someone whose entire message is about systems, support, and sustainability, a toolkit isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point. Visuals without a system are just pretty things gathering dust, the Toolkit turns them into infrastructure.
The Outcome
Lucy is at the beginning of what this library will do for her. And she knows it.
‘It’s still early days but I am excited to use the assets. My website looks a lot better than it did.’
Early days, yes. But the foundation is there now… a visual identity that finally reflects the depth, warmth, and intelligence of her work. One that can hold a strategy deck and a kettlebell in the same frame without either one feeling out of place.
When I asked what she’d say to a friend considering HIYA VIBES, she said:
‘The process with Marianne is amazing. And the images will be totally unique to you.’
Unique. That word matters. Because Lucy’s work is about refusing to be reduced, to a job title, a life stage, a single version of yourself. Her brand visuals should do the same.
Now they do.
Examples of Lucy F’s new images. See more images -> here.
Why It Matters
Lucy’s transformation feels like a calm one. No overnight rebrand, no sudden explosion of content. Just a woman who finally has a visual language that matches the clarity she brings to everything else.
HIYA VIBES didn’t give Lucy a brand, she already had one. It gave her a way to make it visible on the platforms where the agencies need to see her, the women need to find her, and the work needs to speak for itself.
When your visuals finally say what you’ve been trying to say all along, you stop hesitating and you start showing up.
And for someone whose whole mission is keeping women visible? That’s not a small thing.
Ready to Find Your Vibe?
Whether you’re established, emerging, or still figuring yourself out…
If you’re tired of swirling ideas that never quite land…
If you want visuals that reflect not just your work but your inner world…
HIYA VIBES meets you right where you are.
Begin with the VIBE CHECK, see your identity come into focus in the VIBE DEFINITION REPORT, and walk away with a HIYA VIBES still life library + TOOLKIT that reflects the real, imperfect, becoming version of you.
Marianne
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