Business consultants for creatives

We help designers manage their business better

We help designers make confident business decisions

The Design Business Council is Carol Mackay and Greg Branson.

We consult to creative business owners, sharing our experience (of owning and running a design studio), research, and insights (from a decade spent mentoring many Australian creative business owners).

Our onlyness is our knowledge of the Australian design industry. We're not just mentors or coaches – we're practitioners – we've spent our career having skin in the game.

We know what it's like to balance creativity with productivity; client needs with profit, and flexibility with deadlines.

A huge thanks to Greg and Carol for the wonderful business insights. As a creative first and a business mind second, I am so grateful for how you simplify business concepts into manageable steps and processes to grow our studio with purpose and intent.

You have an incredible knack for wording things in a way that speaks directly to our industry and the pain points we may encounter along the way.

Georgie Kropman, Chief Creative Officer. Bright Yellow

Prior to working with Greg, we had many overlapping roles and an inefficient and confusing studio structure.

Through the job description process, we were not only able to define our roles within the company, but also the gaps and overlaps in responsibilities. This helped smooth our workflow in the short term and helped us understand hiring and our company structure for the long term.

Craig Devitt, Managing Director, Hundredweight

We write about the business of design

Each week we write our experience founding and running a design studio, research and our mentoring work as creative business coaches. Here’s our four latest articles. You can access the archive here. Or better still, subscribe and get an article delivered directly to your inbox every Wednesday morning.

Thanks for yesterday, great to get some clarity on the biz as always. Super appreciate your time working through all of this with us.

Massive piece of the puzzle getting the code hire sorted, and thinking differently about approaching new industries.

Tim Meyer, Creative Director Atollon

Yesterday was amazing. A huge thanks for your time, energy, expertise and passion.

Our goal was to achieve some clarity, strategy and confirmation that we’re onto something that could be really great. We got all of that.

Nancy Bugeja, Director, HM