Emily Cristoforis is head of strategy at Sister Mary, a Brooklyn-based design studio building brands that inspire devotion. For 15 years, she has honed her craft for strategic brand creation, leveraging global insight, innovation, and hands-on creative collaboration to build identities that resonate emotionally and deliver real commercial impact.
Outside of work, Emily flexes her creative muscles through craft, with textile art, drawing and screen printing. As part of our 5 Questions series, I caught up with her to discuss the value of storytelling, creativity as art, not science, and the danger of being blinkered by aesthetics.
What’s the ugliest object/design trend you secretly love?
Urban decay – faded signs, peeling paint, lived-in grunge. What most people see as an eyesore, I see as proof of life. When I experience new places, I don’t want to see the shiny picture-perfect scenes I can just look up on Google – I want to experience the beautiful mess below the surface, where life actually happens.
This is especially true when I’m immersing in a place and culture for local brands, something I’ve been lucky enough to spend much of my career doing. The most breakthrough insights and breathtaking design inspiration almost always happen at the street level.
What’s your creative pet peeve?
When the only rationale behind creative choices is aesthetics. “This purple pops” or “This typeface is fun.” What happens if your client hates the color purple, or your audience can’t even read the fun font? Design is subjective – our job is to make the RIGHT design an objective choice. If the client knew the colors you picked came from the brand’s original palette from 150 years ago, or the typeface was crafted with the brand personality as the brief, those design choices are a lot harder to argue with.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever ignored?
“Just keep it simple / don’t overcomplicate it” – there’s a time and place for K.I.S.S., but to get there, it usually takes wading around in the complexity for a while – getting lost in it and finding your way out. The solution should be simple, but the journey to get there isn’t, nor should it be – because the brand and business challenges we’re solving for aren’t simple either.
Complex challenges deserve a complex understanding.
How do you make people care about a brand?
Whether it’s a brand I’m working with or a brand I personally love, the answer is the same – telling the stories that matter to people.
You can see that through Sister Mary’s recent rebrand of Genesee – NY State’s oldest brewery, where we crafted its 150-year history into every can and every experience. It was a brand that had incredibly strong local roots and love, but was relatively unknown beyond Rochester city limits. We went deep into their incredible brand archives to pull the people, products, assets, icons and stories that had gotten lost over time, re-imagining their local roots & legacy for today in a way that speaks to drinkers from everywhere.
On the personal side, I’ve turned SO many people onto Lush’s Sympathy for the Skin moisturizer – not just because it’s amazing (it is!), but because I love knowing the specific person who blended my batch.
Both very different ways of making people care about a brand, but through the same storyful approach.
What would be the name of your autobiography?
She’s Crafty
Because a) I love to craft. Creating jewelry, textiles, prints is how I unwind and ground myself. After a long day at the computer, the hands-on tactility of crafting always brings me back to earth.
And b) My approach to strategy (and how it works with creative) is unconventional, non-linear. It’s an art more than a science. Just as a designer wouldn’t create the same identity system from two different briefs, how I approach the thinking itself is bespoke for every brand, project, and challenge. A framework is only as strong as how much you can break it apart and put it back together again differently.
