Build your foundations first, then activate.
The Design Cure is a strategic studio focused on building marketing that works cohesively - across brand, website, messaging, customer experience and visibility - so businesses can grow with more clarity, consistency and confidence.
Strategy, brand and design.
MEET THE FOUNDER - Rachel Hollier
My career started in retail marketing with an Australian national retail chain - an opportunity that had me moving interstate by myself probably before I was quite ready, but one that shaped everything that came after.
Retail teaches you quickly because everything is measurable and feedback is immediate - if people don’t connect with something, they simply don’t buy. So I learned broadly and fast: merchandising, promotions, campaigns, photography, customer psychology, events, visual communication, creative direction and customer experience.
From there, another opportunity knocked and I moved into high profile shopping centre marketing, working alongside some of Sydney’s biggest agencies, major national brands, international retailers and independent businesses. It was fast-paced, varied, highly creative work - and within a few years I had helped launch over 50 retail businesses in Australia - some of them flagship stores for some of the most well known brands in the world!
An incredible experience but something also became very clear to me:
The big retailers had agencies, teams and budgets.
The smaller independent brands often had better products, more originality, more heart, personality - and far less support.
So I resigned from my role and started helping small businesses as a freelance marketer - which turned out to be the start of my first marketing agency. After a while I hired a graphic designer and I roped my husband in (he was so great with the operations) and over the next eight years, my husband and I built a talented, hardworking team and had the privilege of working with incredible clients and brands - from household names to independent businesses that went on to do great things.
It was a creative, chaotic and incredibly rewarding chapter of life, before eventually selling the business and moving our family to Canberra.
(A sentence that sounds far more linear than it actually was!)
A FEW THINGS OUTSIDE OF WORK
When I’m not working, I’m usually with my kids, renovating something in our house, reading, gardening, making ceramics, or trying to stay off the internet for a minute.
I love living in Canberra for exactly that reason - it’s ambitious without feeling frantic. You can build meaningful work here and still have room to breathe.
WHY I WORK THE WAY I DO
Because my background touched so many parts of marketing and customer experience - retail environments, events, merchandising, digital, campaigns, customer behaviour and creative direction - I naturally started thinking about businesses more holistically.
Marketing in silos never felt quite right to me. I wasn’t just looking at a logo, a website or a social media feed in isolation. I was always looking at how the entire experience connected and whether it actually made people trust, engage and take action.
That way of thinking became the foundation of how I work today.
FOUNDATIONS FIRST
Most marketing advice online tells you to post more, spend more, or jump onto the next thing.
Foundations First is the opposite.
It starts with the positioning, messaging, and structure of your brand - because when those things are clear, everything else works harder and more effectively. It’s the approach I’ve used across more than 100 brands over the past two decades, and consistently, it’s the work that creates the strongest long-term results.
THE RESULTS
When the foundations are right, marketing becomes clearer, more effective, and far less exhausting.
Here’s what that’s looked like in practice:
An e-commerce business that generated seven figures in under a year
A service business fully booked within months of launch
A founder who stepped away from social media because their website now qualifies and converts consistently
An organisation that successfully re-engaged a disconnected membership base
An independent retailer that went on to win local business awards
HOW I WORK
My work is intentionally holistic.
Rather than approaching marketing as a collection of disconnected tasks, I look at how the entire business experience connects - brand, messaging, website, customer journey, content, visibility and conversion.
Because often the issue isn’t that a business needs “more marketing.”
It’s that the pieces aren’t working together clearly yet.
That broader perspective means projects are approached strategically and collaboratively - with a focus on building marketing assets and systems that continue working long after launch day.
STILL HERE? GOOD. LET’S TALK.
If you’re feeling like your marketing has become noisy, disconnected, inconsistent or harder than it should be - there’s usually a reason. Thirty minutes is often enough to identify where the friction is, what’s missing, and whether we’re the right fit to work together.
Capabilities
Brochures, booklets, fliers, mailouts, catalogues, postcards
Posters & Signage
Newsletters
Brand, logo, style guide and colour palettes
Stationery, business cards, letterheads
Advertising
DIGITAL
Website design & development
Social media strategy, content & coaching
Email mailouts (EDM)
Newsletters
Campaigns
Strategy