Long before I ever called myself a brand architect, I was a prop stylist and that world taught me everything I needed to know about building brands, leading teams, and solving the impossible.

I started young, training under my mother at sixteen and beginning my own career by eighteen. My clients were major brands like Absolut Vodka, Pepsi, Dos Equis, Corelle, Nike, Disney. The kind of names that looked glamorous on paper but demanded miracles in real life. These were big-budget shoots that always asked for ten times more than what was feasible, and I had to deliver, no matter what. It didn’t matter if something didn’t exist. If the photographer or art director asked for it, I had to materilize it.

I’ll never forget one photographer who looked at me and said, “I am God,” after asking for clear dirt. It was absurd, but also the perfect metaphor for what that world demanded: to create something out of nothing and make the impossible tangible. Some days I was hunting down one very specific glass that had to refract light just right. Other days I was building entire room sets from scratch (like the set above), sizzling cleaning spray on a grill top for a steak shoot, or methodically dunking fake ice cubes into a glass with a mattress tester. Those shoots were all about precision. Every droplet of condensation, every reflection, every imperfection mattered.

Working with global brands meant every detail was subject to legal review and strict brand guidelines. I learned early how to balance creativity with compliance, how to execute within constraints without losing the artistry. Sometimes I had twenty-two assistants on a single job (like the Absolut shoot below). Other times, I was triple-booked, sprinting from one set to another across the city, juggling crews and timelines.

Every shoot was a masterclass in resourcefulness. Budgets were tight, timelines were shorter than they should have been, and expectations were sky-high. I learned to manage people, budgets, and time under pressure, to communicate with advertising agencies, account executives, and production teams who all spoke different creative languages. I had to anticipate problems before they happened, make quick decisions, and improvise without hesitation.

It was chaotic and exhilarating. I once worked on the Dos Equis campaign and met the “Most Interesting Man in the World.” In reality, he was much shorter than the models towering around him, and we had to stack apple boxes just to make the shot work. Those moments taught me that even in an industry built on illusion, execution is everything.

Prop styling shaped how I think. It trained my eye to see composition, texture, and emotion in every frame and later, in every brand. It taught me that creativity isn’t about ideas; it’s about precision, adaptability, and making beauty function inside impossible circumstances.

Now, when I design brands, I use the same instincts I learned on set. Every project has its own constraints, personalities, and pressures. Every system I build requires structure, intuition, and problem-solving. Styling gave me the foundation for all of it: how to design under pressure, create meaning through detail, and find elegance inside chaos.

When I look back, I realize I didn’t just learn how to make a shot look perfect. I learned how to build the systems that make things work. Prop styling didn’t just prepare me for a career in branding; it built it.

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