Why I chose to build my branding, marketing and website business in Colchester after studying in Norwich

I studied Graphic Arts at Colchester Institute before completing my design degree at Norwich University of the Arts. By then I'd experienced city life and loved every minute of it. Norwich is a fantastic place to study, and London always felt like the obvious next step.

Instead, I came back to Colchester and built my branding business here. Looking back, that decision shaped everything that followed.

Studying design in Norwich gave me a much wider creative foundation and showed me what was possible within the industry, but returning to Colchester gave me the chance to build that experience into something closer to home. I had already studied Graphic Arts at Colchester Institute before completing my design degree at Norwich University of the Arts, so Essex and East Anglia had been part of my creative life for years before Hi This Is Bry existed.

Coming back also made sense because I could see how many ambitious small businesses were already operating across Colchester, Essex and Suffolk. There was no shortage of people building interesting companies, but there was still a tendency to assume that serious branding, website design or marketing strategy meant looking towards London.

I never really bought into that idea, because the quality of the thinking does not suddenly improve when you cross the M25. Small businesses here deserve strategic creative support that understands what they are trying to build, without automatically paying for the overheads and distance that can come with choosing a large London agency.

See also: My time as a brand designer and web designer in Colchester

Small businesses across Essex and Suffolk deserve strong creative support close to home

The longer I worked in design, the more obvious it became that plenty of small businesses had outgrown the way they were presenting themselves. The service might be excellent, the owner might have years of experience and the business might already have loyal customers, while the branding or website still looked like something created during the first few months of trading.

That gap is exactly the kind of problem I wanted Hi This Is Bry to help with. My brand strategy and marketing services are built around helping businesses create a clearer identity and positioning, while my web design and marketing services focus on making sure the website actually supports how the business sells.

Being closer to the businesses I work with also means I understand more of the environment they are operating in. A founder in Colchester or Bury St Edmunds may be competing locally while also selling nationally, so the branding needs to feel credible enough for both rather than treating them like a tiny local business that should somehow stay in its lane.

Building a creative business where I already understood the community

Choosing to build Hi This Is Bry around Colchester gave me much more than somewhere to put a business address. I already knew the area, I could spend time around other business owners and I could see first hand how people were building companies across Essex rather than trying to understand the local market entirely through a competitor spreadsheet.

Networking events, local awards and conversations with business owners have all influenced how I think about the work. You start noticing the same problems appearing in different forms, whether somebody is struggling to explain what they sell, has a website that no longer reflects the quality of the business or knows they need to become more visible but has no idea which marketing activity actually deserves their time.

That wider thinking is why Hi This Is Bry eventually grew beyond design alone. My business strategy services now sit alongside branding, websites and marketing because sometimes the most useful thing I can do is help somebody work out what the business needs before anybody starts redesigning it.

See also: What it's like running a design and marketing business in Colchester vs Bury St Edmunds

I saw space for a different kind of creative business

There were already talented designers and agencies in the area when I started Hi This Is Bry, so the opportunity was never simply that nobody else was doing creative work. What interested me was building something that combined strategy, accessibility and genuinely bespoke design without forcing every small business into the same agency style process.

I wanted clients to understand what I was recommending and why, rather than receiving a mysterious creative presentation and being expected to nod along because the designer knows best. That also meant creating different levels of support, because a business that needs a £250 brand refresh should not automatically be pushed towards a much larger project simply because that is more profitable for the person selling it.

My Creative Services now reflect that approach, with consultations, focused clarity services and larger strategic projects depending on where the business is starting from. The point is to solve the actual problem rather than deciding in advance that everybody needs exactly the same package.

Why does local knowledge matter when most of my work can be done remotely?

Most of my work can be delivered remotely, so somebody does not need to live in Colchester, Essex or Suffolk to work with me. I support businesses across the UK, which means the practical process of developing a brand or building a website does not depend on us being in the same town.

Local knowledge still matters because it shapes the way I understand independent businesses and the people behind them. Spending time around different high streets, networking groups and business communities gives me much more context than looking at every project as though it exists in a completely abstract online marketplace.

It also means local clients can work with somebody who understands the area without being limited to a purely local audience. A business can be rooted in Essex or Suffolk while building a website, brand and marketing strategy designed to attract customers much further afield, and those two things can work perfectly well together.

Colchester has been part of some of the biggest moments in the business

Colchester has ended up being connected to several important points in the growth of Hi This Is Bry, which has made the decision to build the business around this part of the country feel even more significant. One of those moments was being shortlisted for the East of England StartUp Awards, with the ceremony taking place at Curzon in Colchester.

Recognition like that felt particularly nice because it connected the business back to a city that had already played such a big part in my creative career. It was not simply travelling somewhere for an awards event, it was being recognised in a place where I had studied, worked and spent years developing the experience that eventually became Hi This Is Bry.

The same is true of being featured in Essex Life Magazine, because local recognition lands differently when the publication represents somewhere you genuinely consider part of your own story. It reinforces the idea that building a nationally available creative business does not require pretending the local part of it is somehow less important.

See also: Hi This Is Bry shortlisted for the East of England StartUp Awards

See also: Hi This Is Bry has been featured in Essex Life Magazine

The environment around me changes the way I work

I do some of my best thinking when I am away from the screen, which is one of the things I value about working around Essex and Suffolk. Walking, being outside and having enough space to let an idea settle tends to give me better answers than staring at the same Illustrator file for another hour and hoping enlightenment eventually arrives.

That affects client work more than it might sound, because strategic projects need time to think as well as time to produce. Whether I am working through the positioning behind a brand or trying to understand why a website journey is not making sense, stepping away for a while often helps me see the problem much more clearly.

I like having access to places with active business communities while also being able to get somewhere quieter when I need to think. That balance suits the way I work, and building the business independently has given me much more freedom to use it rather than forcing every useful idea to appear between nine and five at the same desk.

Running Hi This Is Bry gave me room to work differently

Joining another agency could have given me more traditional experience, but building Hi This Is Bry gave me the freedom to decide what I thought a useful creative business should actually look like. I could structure projects around the amount of support somebody genuinely needed, make pricing easier to find and build accessibility into the way I communicate with clients rather than treating it as something separate.

That freedom also meant I could keep the strategic and creative sides of the work together. I am interested in what something looks like, but I am equally interested in whether the business knows what it is trying to communicate and whether the finished work helps the right people understand it.

That approach has since been recognised beyond the local area, including Hi This Is Bry being named UK top 10 for Best Business Branding and UK top 100 for Best Creative Arts Business. Those things are lovely in their own right, but they also reassure me that building the business in my own way did not mean limiting how seriously the work could be taken.

See also: Hi This Is Bry named UK top 10 for Best Business Branding at the Small Business Awards

Does being local change how I approach branding and websites?

It gives me another layer of context, particularly when I am working with businesses that depend partly on reputation within their area. A local service business might need to feel familiar and approachable while still looking established enough that somebody is comfortable choosing it over competitors they may already know.

The same business may also want to attract customers from further away, which means the identity and website cannot rely entirely on local familiarity. It still needs clear positioning, useful evidence and enough personality that someone encountering it through Google can understand what makes the business worth considering.

This is where I think strategic design becomes more useful than simply making something attractive. A Strategic Brand Identity can work through how the business should be positioned before the visuals are developed, while a Strategic Website Build looks at the customer journey and sales strategy behind the website rather than treating it as a collection of nice looking pages.

See also: What goes into award winning branding and websites

FAQs

Why choose a local brand designer? Working with somebody who understands the area can be useful when local customers, competitors or communities form an important part of your business. You can still benefit from a strategic approach designed to work beyond the local market, which means being based in Essex or Suffolk does not require branding yourself as a purely local business.

Where did you study design? I studied Graphic Arts at Colchester Institute before completing my design degree at Norwich University of the Arts. After graduating, I returned to Essex, worked in creative roles and eventually started Hi This Is Bry around the experience I had built across branding, websites and marketing.

Do you only work with businesses in Colchester? No, I work with businesses across Essex and Suffolk as well as clients elsewhere in the UK. Most of my Creative Services can be delivered remotely, so location does not limit who I can work with.

What kind of businesses do you work with? I mainly support small businesses and founders that need clearer branding, stronger websites or more useful strategic direction. The right service depends on what is already working, because an established business that needs a focused refresh has very different needs from somebody still developing the foundations of the offer.

Can you help with both branding and websites? Yes, I offer both brand strategy and marketing services and web design and marketing services, so they can be developed together when that makes sense. This can be particularly useful when the new website needs to carry the brand positioning and visual identity consistently rather than treating them as separate pieces of work.

Building locally never meant thinking small

Studying in Norwich gave me a broader creative education, while coming back to Colchester gave me somewhere to apply that experience and start building something of my own. I have since worked with businesses across Essex, Suffolk and further around the UK, but the communities around this part of the country are still a big part of where Hi This Is Bry came from.

I still meet founders who are doing excellent work while struggling to present the business with the same confidence, which is exactly the kind of gap I wanted to help close when I started. Being based outside London has never felt like a limitation, because good strategy and creative work can come from anywhere, and the businesses here are more than ambitious enough to deserve it.

Want to see where your business could be more visible?

You can have a brilliant business locally and still lose opportunities if people cannot understand what makes it worth choosing when they find you online. My free Business Visibility Playbook helps you review the wider experience around your branding, website and visible proof, so you can spot where the business may be stronger than the impression people are currently getting.