Consulting
Something you built stopped holding together. I find where the joints failed and build the structure so it holds.
How It Starts
The Diagnostic ($3,500)
I look at what you have across brand, design, and technology. You get a written report: where things are drifting from your intent, what’s causing it structurally, and what to fix first. The report is yours whether we work together after or not.
If you want me to build the fix, we scope that together based on what the diagnostic turns up. Could be a brand system, a site architecture, an AI governance layer. Could be all three.
Ongoing Advisory
Monthly retainer for when the structure is in place and you need someone keeping an eye on it. I review decisions, check governance, and handle active work as things evolve. Scope and pricing depend on what you need.
What This Looks Like
Every team I talk to has a version of the same story. Something that used to hold together stopped holding together, and nobody can point to exactly when it happened.
AI output lost its voice. The tools got faster but the brand voice dissolves into helpful, articulate copy that could belong to anyone. The design decisions that used to carry judgment flatten into defaults.
The design system drifted. It grew across a dozen people and three years of feature work. Every decision made sense in isolation. Nobody was watching the cumulative effect.
The brand fractured. Five contributors, three agencies over four years. The work looks different depending on who touched it last. The guidelines exist. They’re just not structural enough to survive contact with production.
The platform outgrew its architecture. It held fine at launch, then absorbed requirements for six years. The information architecture stopped agreeing with itself two years ago.
The practice is the same in every case. I figure out where intent stops surviving execution and build the structure so it holds across contributors and time.
Background
I spent thirteen years as principal architect on an enterprise recruiting platform, holding the design system and information architecture together through three technology shifts and over a thousand client deployments. I studied visual communication at SVA. I taught special education in Brooklyn, where I learned that the system receiving the work has its own processing reality, and you design around it. The AI governance methodology I published grew from that same practice.
I also teach this. Joinery is a school I founded for creative practitioners. Consulting applies it to your specific situation. The school teaches you to run it yourself.
Prefer email? peter@petersalvato.com