Jon Czeranna.

I spent the first two decades of my career building brands for big companies. The kind with committees, research budgets, and in-house creative teams. The whole time, I kept having the same conversation with small business owners: I know my work is better than the firms that keep beating me, but I can't get the market to see it.

That conversation, repeated over a decade, became the work I do now.

The studio

Wit & Craft is a brand strategy and design studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We bring big-agency-level strategic thinking to small and service-based businesses, with Midwestern approachability and craftsmanship.

Our positioning system, Brands Made Different®, is what we use across every engagement. It's the same set of frameworks I used inside large brand teams, rebuilt specifically for boutique studios where the founder is the brand and the work is the differentiator.

The Brand Lab

The Brand Lab is the program version of that work, built specifically for interior designers.

Most interior designers we meet have the same problem. The work is genuinely good. The portfolio holds up. The clients who do hire them are happy. And yet the pipeline keeps stalling, the fees keep getting negotiated, and the right clients can't seem to find them.

That's not a marketing problem. It's a positioning problem. The Brand Lab is the program that fixes it. We run designers through three phases (Discover, Develop, Declare), produce a complete Strategic Positioning Document, and stay in the work until premium fees feel obvious instead of negotiated.

What I believe about positioning

A short list of working beliefs that show up in everything I write and every program cohort I run.

1. Positioning is a strategy problem, not a design problem. The reason most rebrands don't move the needle is that the strategic work that should have happened first never did.
2. The boutique studio's biggest asset is the founder. The firms that try to sound bigger than they are usually struggle harder than the ones who lean into the human at the center.
3. Wrong-fit clients are a leading indicator. If your inquiries are mostly the wrong projects at the wrong prices, the positioning is doing the wrong job.
4. Specificity beats sophistication. The positioning that wins is the one that makes one client feel personally addressed, not the one that sounds the most polished.
5. The work compounds. The first six months of clear positioning feel slow. The third year is when the business stops worrying about new business.

Where to start

If you're reading this and the work resonates, three options.

• The complete guide to branding for interior designers is the pillar piece. The framework, the common mistakes, the shape of the work.
• The journal is where the long-form thinking lives. Spokes on positioning, pricing, niche, personal brand, and marketing. Read what's relevant; skip what isn't.
• The Brand Lab is the program. Four months. Five spots a month. The next cohort is filling. Book a Brand Strategy Call if you want to talk it through. Thirty minutes, no pitch. If we're not a fit, I'll tell you.

Beyond the program

Wit & Craft does brand strategy and design work outside The Brand Lab too, for businesses across categories. If you're a manufacturer, a consultancy, a trade firm, or a boutique studio outside interior design and the work I describe here resonates, the studio can help. witandcraft.com is the front door for everything else.