Even Designers Need Designers: What a Jane App Creative Director Taught Me About Getting Outside Help
TL;DR: Bianca DiPietro leads the design team at Jane App and has built brands for HelloFresh Canada, Chefs Plate, and her own freelance clients since 2011. She’s also a past Monarch client. In this episode, we talk about scaling a design team without losing its culture, the “safe” rebrand advice she ignores, and why she couldn’t design her own brand even though it’s literally her job.
Bianca DiPietro and I go back further than most of my podcast guests. We taught together at Humber College, she was the Program Coordinator, and she brought me on to teach typography. We’re also both YSDN grads (IYKYK). So when she agreed to come on the show, this felt less like an interview and more like two old colleagues catching up on mic.
Since those Humber days, Bianca has led creative at HelloFresh Canada and Chefs Plate, taught at York and U of T, run her own freelance practice since 2011, and now leads the design team at Jane App. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because a huge number of my own health and wellness clients run their practices on it.
She’s also a past Monarch client. We worked together on her personal brand a few years ago, which is a fun twist, because she’s a design leader in her own right. That’s exactly what we get into in this episode: why even the most credentialed creative in the room still needed an outside eye on her own brand.
Building a team that moves fast without losing its personality
Bianca’s approach to scaling a creative team comes down to protecting two things at once: speed and culture. Her team uses AI and modern tools to move faster than ever, but she keeps certain time sacred β team collaboration, feedback, and even 20 minutes at the start of a Monday meeting just to talk about everyone’s weekend.
“Feedback is a gift, we’re all in it together” is the mantra she’s built her team culture around, and it shows: as Jane has scaled, she’s moved from hiring generalist designers to bringing on specialists (UX, video, senior campaign designers) as the business case for each role became clear β and she’s learned to make the case to leadership with confidence, not hesitation.
The brand philosophy behind Jane App
For a lot of Monarch’s own clients β practitioners in health and wellness β Jane App is part of their daily work. Bianca’s team designs around three words: human, helpful, delightful. Jane hasn’t done a dramatic rebrand in its ten-plus years; instead, the brand evolves continuously, in small, tested, deliberate steps.
That’s also the “safe” branding advice Bianca actively ignores: the idea that a rebrand needs a big, dramatic reveal moment. Her take is that a brand can evolve steadily and stay just as successful β sometimes more so β than one big flip-of-a-switch relaunch.
Why even designers need designers
Here’s the part of the conversation I loved most. Bianca has spent her career building other people’s brands, but when it came to her own, she got stuck. Her words: designing for yourself is “an out-of-body experience” β you lose the ability to treat yourself like a client with needs, goals, and a distinct point of view, because you’re too close to it.
That’s where Monarch came in. We worked through the blocks together and built the brand she’d been circling for years but couldn’t land on her own.
Her advice for other creatives such as photographers, designers, anyone who’s an expert in their own field, who assume they should be able to DIY their own brand because it’s “their thing”: don’t feel bad about asking for help. It’s not always about the output. Sometimes it’s about the guidance through the process.
What “self made” means to Bianca
Bianca’s answer ties her whole career together: take every opportunity as a chance to learn, because everybody’s path looks different. She never planned to teach for six years, or to end up leading design at Jane β she just kept saying yes to the next challenge and letting that build who she became.
The branding we dreamt up with Bianca
FAQ
Why do even designers need designers? Because it’s hard to see your own brand clearly. Bianca DiPietro, who leads the design team at Jane App, says designing for yourself feels like “an out-of-body experience” β you lose the ability to treat yourself like a client with needs and goals, because you’re too close to it. That’s why she hired Monarch for her own brand.
What does Bianca DiPietro do at Jane App? Bianca leads the design team at Jane App, overseeing brand identity, campaigns, and experiential design for the practice management platform used by many health and wellness practitioners.
What is Bianca DiPietro’s connection to Monarch Design Co.? Bianca is a past Monarch client β she and Ashley worked together on Bianca’s personal freelance brand. They also previously taught together at Humber College.
What branding advice does Bianca DiPietro disagree with? Bianca actively ignores the idea that a rebrand needs one big, dramatic reveal moment. She believes brands can evolve continuously in smaller steps and be just as successful.
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