You don't have to choose between strategy and soul.
Creative Direction for Brands & Humans Ready to Create From Their Truth.
There has never been anyone quite like you.
Your perspective, your creativity, your particular way of seeing the world — it's never existed before. And it never will again.
I'm Nicole — Creative Director, Brand Strategist, and the human behind Cosmic Pixel. I help female founders, small businesses, and organizations find the authentic frequency that makes their work feel unmistakably, unapologetically theirs.
You've always known what you're about. Let's make sure everyone else does too.
Cosmic Pixel origin story
Here's what I believe:
Every person carries a completely original frequency — a pattern of creativity, purpose, and impact that has never existed before and never will again. Like pixels in a larger image, each of us contributes something essential to the evolving picture of humanity.
When that pixel is blurry, the whole picture suffers. The people who were meant to find you can't see you. The work that was meant to come through you doesn't. Your truth stays hiding in the shadows.
That's not a marketing problem. That's an alignment problem.
Cosmic Pixel lives in the space between strategy and soul — bringing your pixel into focus so your voice, your story, and your work finally reflect the thing that makes you unmistakably, irreplaceably you.
HOW WE CAN WORK TOGETHER
Three ways in.
All of them involve real strategic thinking, real creative leadership, and a real human on the other end.
Fractional Creative Director — For agencies and established brands that need senior creative leadership without the full-time overhead.
Creative Strategy & Direction — For small businesses and nonprofits that need both the thinking and the doing. Strategy, campaigns, content, digital — quarterbacked by someone who actually cares what it becomes.
Find Your Frequency (beta) — For founders and business owners who've built something real but can't find the words for it yet. One month. Real clarity.
-
The Situation
You have a team. A designer, maybe a content person, a coordinator. They're working hard — but something keeps feeling off. Campaigns don't quite cohere. Creative doesn't quite land. Leadership has feedback but can't always articulate it. And your team is executing without a clear creative vision to execute toward.
What you're missing isn't more people. It's strategic creative leadership at the top.
What This Looks Like
I embed with your team on a retainer basis and function as your senior creative lead. I bring the strategic thinking, set the creative direction, and make sure everything your team produces actually coheres.
I'm the person who:
Holds the creative vision so your team always knows what they're working toward
Bridges the gap between what leadership wants and what the creative team actually makes
Reviews and elevates work before it goes out the door
Leads campaign concepting and big-picture ideation
Translates business goals into creative direction — in the room, in real time
Gives your team a senior creative brain to think alongside, not just a manager to report to
Right For You If
You have internal creative staff but no senior creative leader
Your brand output feels inconsistent or unfocused
You've outgrown freelancers but aren't ready to hire a full-time CD
You need someone who speaks both the language of leadership and the language of creatives
Investment
Monthly retainer, starting at $3,500/month. Scoped to your team size and needs.
-
The Situation
You're wearing twelve hats. Marketing is one of them — and it keeps slipping. You know you should be more consistent. You know your brand could be clearer. You've tried freelancers and gotten work that looks fine but doesn't feel like you. And you don't have the budget — or the bandwidth — for a full agency.
What you actually need is one strategic creative partner who can think at the level of your whole brand and help you make things that actually land.
What This Looks Like
This is a project-based or ongoing engagement where I bring both the strategic brain and the creative direction. I figure out what you need, concept how to solve it, and quarterback the execution — using AI tools and trusted creative partners to fill the gaps where needed.
Depending on your goals, this might include:
Brand Voice & Messaging
Getting clear on who you are, what you say, and how you say it — so every piece of content feels like it came from the same place. Includes messaging framework, tone of voice guidance, and language you can hand to anyone who creates content for you.Campaign Concepting & Direction
You have a launch, a program, an event, a push. I concept the creative idea, map the touchpoints (social, email, print, digital — whatever's relevant), and make sure the whole thing feels cohesive from start to finish.
Content Strategy & Digital DirectionA content and digital system that makes sense for your audience, your channels, and your actual capacity. Not a 40-page playbook no one reads. A practical, usable framework — with the creative direction to execute it and the digital thinking to make it work where your audience actually lives: search, social, email, your website.
Social Media Playbooks & Recruitment Campaigns
For nonprofits and mission-driven organizations that need their marketing to work as hard as their programs do. Includes channel strategy, content frameworks, copy direction, and campaign planning built around your real goals — not vanity metrics.
Creative Oversight & Team Alignment
You have a small team or a rotating roster of freelancers producing work that doesn't quite align. I come in as the creative through-line — reviewing work, giving direction, making sure everything reflects the same brand.
Right For You If
You're a small business, nonprofit, or founder-led organization
You've outgrown DIY but don't need a full agency
Your brand feels inconsistent, and you don't know where to start
You have a specific campaign, launch, or initiative that needs real creative thinking behind it
You want a partner who actually understands your organization — not a vendor who treats you like a line item
Investment
Starting at $1,500/project or $2,000/month for ongoing work.
-
Sound Familiar?
"I know what I do. I just can't explain it without rambling."
"My website is fine but it doesn't really sound like me."
"I've been meaning to figure out my brand for months." (Years? No judgment.)
"We've been in business five years and I still feel like our brand doesn't reflect what we actually do."
You don't need a full rebrand. You don't need a 40-page strategy document that lives in a folder no one opens. You don't need more content ideas.
You need someone to sit with you, ask the right questions, and help you find the signal underneath all the noise.
That's Find Your Frequency.What It Is
Find Your Frequency is a focused, one-month engagement designed to get you clear on who you are, what you stand for, and how to say it — in a way that finally feels true.
It's not a workshop. It's not a course. It's not a template you fill out alone.
It's a real creative partnership with a senior brand strategist who has spent 20 years helping brands find their voice — and who actually cares what yours sounds like.
How It Works
One month. Three touchpoints. One document you'll actually use.
Week 1 — The Deep Dive (90 minutes)A real conversation — not an intake form. We talk about why you started this, what feels true versus forced, what your customers actually need from you, and what you've been afraid to say out loud. I'm listening for the thing underneath what you're saying. That's usually where the good stuff lives.
Weeks 2–3 — The Build
You get space to breathe. I do the work. I synthesize everything from our conversation, concept your positioning, map your messaging, and shape it into something clear and usable. This is where 20 years of creative direction actually shows up.
Week 4 — The Reveal & Refine (60 minutes)
We come back together. I walk you through what I built. You tell me what lands and what doesn't. We refine. You leave with something that finally feels right.
What You Walk Away WithA focused Brand Clarity Document that includes:
Brand Foundation — who you are, why you exist, what you stand for
Positioning Statement — the one sentence that finally nails it
Messaging Framework — how to talk about what you do across different contexts: website, social, pitches, in person
Visual Direction — mood, tone, feel (enough to brief a designer, build a website, or direct a content creator)
Your Frequency — the through-line that makes you you. The thing that should show up everywhere.
Right For You If
You've built something real but can't find the words for it
Your brand grew organically and now feels scattered or inconsistent
You're a nonprofit whose mission is crystal-clear internally but doesn't translate to the outside world
You've been "meaning to figure out your brand" for longer than you'd like to admit
You suspect your marketing isn't working because the problem is upstream of the tactics
The Feeling People Describe After
Like they re-met themselves. Like someone finally held up a mirror and said — yes, that's you. That's what you've been trying to say.
Not just a document. A homecoming.
Beta Investment$1,000 for the first cohort. Price increases after the first round. Limited spots.
I didn't start Cosmic Pixel because I had it all figured out.
I started it because the universe wouldn't shut up about it.
Twenty years in advertising. Offices in Nashville, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, Seattle, Tampa. Big brands, scrappy startups, campaigns that changed things, and campaigns that died in conference rooms at the hands of people who'd never once talked to a real customer. I loved the work. I was really good at it. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I lost the thread of my own frequency.
That's the thing nobody tells you about building brands for a living: you can spend two decades helping everyone else find their voice and completely forget to use your own.
So here we are.
Cosmic Pixel is — honestly? — still becoming. You're witnessing the birth of it in real time. And I think that's kind of the point. Because the work I'm most called to lives exactly here: in the messy, luminous, terrifying space between who you've been performing and who you actually are. Between the strategy deck and the soul underneath it. Between the brand that looks right and the one that finally feels true.
I play in two worlds simultaneously and I've stopped apologizing for it. As comfortable in a brand strategy session as I am in a shamanic circle. I believe in data and divine timing. My left brain and my right brain. My spreadsheet and my stars. I've watched human authenticity get systematically engineered out of brands — and out of the people behind them — and I've decided that's the thing I'm here to disrupt.
Not with a manifesto. With the work. With this.
What I know for sure: it's rooted in authenticity, vulnerability, humor, strategy, and soul. For brands that want to stop performing and start transmitting. For humans ready to show up as the full, weird, wonderful, specific person they came here to be.
The woo and the work. Both. Always. (And yes — sometimes Taco Bell. We contain multitudes.)
A FEW THINGS WORTH KNOWING
I span vision AND detail. Both hemispheres, fully operational.
I've worked at 10 agencies across 2 continents, and I still think the most important creative tool is genuine curiosity about people.
I don't work with companies that treat people like cogs. Been there, done that.
I will tell you when something isn't working. Kindly, but honestly. Always.
I'm fueled by shamanic practices, houseplants I definitely didn't need, radical vulnerability, and the belief that the more fully we show up as ourselves, the better everything gets.
I am a proud participant in the controversial lifestyle choice of putting pineapple on my pizza.
I'm based in Louisville, KY, but can work interdimensionally.
About Nicole Koestel