How Aspen Grove Built a Premium Psychiatric Brand Without Feeling Clinical

Hey Reader,

There’s a point in growing a business where your old brand isn’t necessarily bad—it just keeps introducing people to a version of your business that doesn’t really exist anymore.

That’s where Dr. Peter “Petey” Kass found himself when he came to us to build the new brand + website for Aspen Grove Holistic Psychiatry, his San Diego-based psychiatric practice.

Petey had already spent years building his practice and refining the way he wanted to care for patients, but the business itself was entering a very different stage. He was moving beyond his previous positioning in sports psychiatry, preparing to expand beyond a solo practice, and stepping into more of a leadership role within the local San Diego community.

More importantly, he had developed a very specific philosophy about what psychiatric care could look like.

Instead of the traditional experience where someone might get 15 minutes with a psychiatrist before walking away with a diagnosis or prescription, Petey practices from a much more relational, whole-person perspective. His patients have direct access to him, appointments are intentionally collaborative, and his approach brings together evidence-based medicine, talk therapy, lifestyle changes, and holistic treatment.

But when someone found him online? They weren’t getting any of that.

His old website felt clunky and more amateur than the caliber of care he was providing, with generic stock imagery that could have belonged to almost any medical practice. And because the positioning of the business itself had changed, the words and visuals were still communicating a version of Aspen Grove that Petey had already outgrown.

So rather than simply giving the old website a facelift, we asked a bigger question:
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​What does it feel like to receive care from Aspen Grove?

The answers to that question shaped almost every decision we made.

We wanted the brand to feel like a trusted guide—deeply knowledgeable and credible, but also connected to nature, community, and the idea that someone is walking alongside you rather than treating you from across the room or a computer screen.

And because Petey wanted this next iteration of Aspen Grove to last, we weren't designing around what looked trendy in healthcare right now. We were creating a brand system and digital home with enough depth to support the practice as it grows.

Some of our favorite moments from this total brand transformation looked like:

Refined the positioning and naming from “Aspen Grove” into Aspen Grove Holistic Psychiatry, giving prospective patients immediate context around Petey’s whole-person approach while also helping distinguish the practice from similarly named mental health organizations in other states

Built the visual identity around the actual Aspen Grove story, including a logo featuring two Aspen trees whose shared root system reflects something we loved about the name itself: individual Aspen trees are actually interconnected underground, a fitting metaphor for a practice where relationship is foundational to care

Developed a California-inspired color system pulled from San Diego-based Impressionist painter Maurice Braun’s landscapes—using earth tones, dusty blues, greens, ochres, yellows, and browns to make the practice feel connected to its sense of place without falling into the expected “wellness brand” aesthetic

Replaced generic healthcare imagery with a much richer visual world, incorporating botanical photograms made with sunlight and plants, public-domain Impressionist landscapes, nature photography, subtle video, and textures that make the brand feel both modern and deeply rooted

Rebuilt the website around the questions prospective patients actually have, expanding the contact experience to explain the intake process, embedding scheduling directly into the site, clarifying Petey’s approach throughout, and creating easier pathways to specific services like talk therapy

Developed a search strategy alongside the website itself, weaving terms like “holistic psychiatry San Diego” and “whole person psychiatry” naturally into the content and schema so Aspen Grove could become more discoverable through both traditional search and emerging AI search without turning the website into a wall of keywords

Extended the new identity beyond the website, creating photography guidelines, business cards, a flexible one-page template, and a Mailchimp newsletter system so the same feeling carries through the patient experience instead of disappearing the second someone leaves the homepage

The result is a brand that feels much closer to the kind of psychiatric practice Petey has been building all along: polished and premium without becoming sterile, deeply thoughtful without becoming inaccessible, and rooted in the idea that good mental healthcare is ultimately about a relationship between people.

And maybe most importantly, it finally gives Aspen Grove a foundation that can grow with the practice instead of becoming something Petey needs to replace again in another few years.

Because sometimes a rebrand isn't about becoming someone new.

It's about finally making the outside of your business look and feel like everything that's already changed on the inside.

If your business has evolved but your brand is still introducing people to who you were three years ago, we'd love to help you build what's next. Click here to learn more about our services or fill out this form and tell us about your next project.
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Now booking projects for Q4 + 2027

December - 2 spots
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Until next time,
Charlee & Leah

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