Sixteen years into running her own firm, Brittany Phillips still gives young designers the same piece of advice: go find someone you admire and go learn. Not because she's repeating what worked. Because she lived it, and it's still the truest thing she knows.

Brittany is the founder of Brittany Phillips Design, a brand design firm in Fayetteville built intentionally small. She came up through regional ad agencies, global work with Saatchi and Saatchi X, and years at DOCSA under mentor Tim Walker before going out on her own. In this episode, she sits down with Angela to talk about what it actually looks like to build a career, a business, and a family in the same city you stayed in by choice. And the design principle she uses with clients that turns out to be the best life advice she has: when you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. In this episode, we get into:

• Why the most boring early-career work often becomes your most valuable skill
• What she'd tell every young woman just starting out in Fayetteville
• The word Angela heard in Brittany's life description that neither of them had connected to design before
• How she handles the frustration of not being heard in a male-dominated industry, and what she did with it
• The secret goal involving art she hasn't told anyone about yet

Brittany talks about the detail work that felt tedious and almost devastating early in her career, the years of prepping files, checking crop marks, learning what can go wrong at press. And how that exact work is now the thing that makes her irreplaceable to clients. She also opens up about navigating creative disagreement with a client who doesn't choose what you'd choose, and why the advice "take it for what it is, it doesn't define you" is a whole lot easier to say than to live.

There's a moment in this conversation where Angela connects Brittany's approach to life to the principles of design itself: restraint, breathing room, margin. The things you don't put in matter as much as the things you do. Brittany hadn't quite framed it that way. Neither will you, until you hear it.

The Women of All Generations event is June 16, 2026, 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center. Brittany will be there as the moderator of the panel discussion. Grab your tickets at fayettevillear.com/woag.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Brittany Phillips Design: brittanyphillipsdesign.com
• Blackwood Martin (regional ad agency, Fayetteville)
• Saatchi and Saatchi X
• DOCSA, Fayetteville (mentor: Tim Walker)
• City of Fayetteville Trash and Recycling
• Chamber Fayetteville
• Women of All Generations event: fayettevillear.com/woag

Connect with Brittany:

• Website: brittanyphillipsdesign.com
• Instagram: @bpdfayar
• Facebook: facebook.com/brittanyphillipsdesign
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brittany-phillips-ba49818

Mentioned in this episode:

Women of All Generations | June 16, 2026

The Women of All Generations event is almost here. Join us June 16, 2026 from 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center for an afternoon of real conversation, connection, and celebration. Tickets and sponsorships are available now. You belong in that room. Grab your spot at fayettevillear.com/woag.