Q&A: Studio Linear
We’re back with another Q&A, this time with one of our favorite graphic design firms, Studio Linear. We met Andrea, who runs the agency with her sister, Sara, when I hosted her on Adobe Live. Head over here if you want to see a replay of the first day of that stream, and watch her create some really fun collages. We hit it off right away, and it was so fun to talk about design and business with her on those streams.
Since then, we’ve loved following these sisters and seeing all the work they produce together. I have a background in graphic design, and while it’s not what I’m actively doing now, I still love it, and I’m always so inspired by their work, especially their collages. We asked Andrea to share a little about their business and advice she has for other entrepreneurs. Make sure to follow them here and then read on for some inspiration and tips.
tell us a little about who you are, how you started your company, and what your specialty is.
I am founder and co-owner of Studio Linear, a design agency based in Maine and Minneapolis. I live in Maine and work remotely from home where my husband is a stay-at-home dad to our 2 year old daughter, London and we homeschool our 10 year old son.
I am actually completely self-taught designer as is my sister, Sara. I attended college for Music Composition and Landscape Architecture and it wasn’t until later in life that I discovered my calling. Sara attended college for Marine Biology and joined me here at Studio Linear almost 3 years ago. With no formal training, we spent a lot of our time learning through trial and error, from online courses, attending conferences and remaining open minded and eager to keep learning.
what drew you to graphic design?
Sara and I were raised in an artistic household. Our dad is an architect and our mom was a textile designer, most of our weekends were spent going to an art museum or even taking art classes. We naturally had a love for design but it wasn’t until much later in life that we realized we could actually DO something with that passion.
what does your creative process look like and how has that changed over time?
In the beginning, it was very experimental. Never attending college for design or business, diving into a career in the field was very far from glamorous. I started the company roughly 7 years ago, from the kitchen of my house, working evenings. I started by reaching out to friends and family and asked if they needed any design work, perhaps a logo or new website. I started there, learning as I went. I taught myself how to use Wordpress, Photoshop and essentially how to begin a business from the ground up. I forced myself to become more social, to signup for speaking engagements as often as I could, I would attend business after hour events and volunteer my design time for things such as poster designs, just to get our name out there. My creative process often was me taking my latop to the local Denny’s (because they had better wifi than we did at our house) and I would sit for hours using Photoshop, creating as much as I could to learn. There weren’t apps such as Slack back then and Instagram really was not on my radar to use a tool for marketing. As these things have been developed, it has really helped to streamline how we manage the business side of the business and marketing.
As the business grew, I stopped working nights and I opened a studio near where I lived in Maine and would work from there while my son was in school. We had several interns over the course of a few years and it was nice to have a space to be creative in. As we became busier, my sister Sara joined forces and became co-owner here and we actually stepped back and took time to reevaluate what was best for the business. Sara lives in Minneapolis so having a company that could work remotely was crucial. It made us look at whether or not having a physical location was even necessary and in the end, it just did not make sense for our business model as we grew the company. Being able to work from home and have freelancers who could do the same was a big turning point for us and using apps such as Slack help us to stay on track with project management.
are there any challenges or setbacks that come with your line of work?
Oh definitely! There is the fun task of chasing clients for payments, waiting for feedback so that we can move forward with design work, managing things such as proposals, contracts, invoicing etc that can sometimes take up your entire day when you had other things lined up. Some areas we did decide to outsource to because honestly, I am awful with money so we hired a bookkeeper and accountant to help us.
where do you draw inspiration from? any thoughts on remaining unique in your field?
We often create mood boards for all of our branding and packaging projects and use Pinterest to collaborate with our clients. I think actually trying to avoid using tools for inspiration has helped us stay creative. A lot of clients come to us knowing what they want and it is up to us to take that vision and apply it to a design, using too much influence such as Instagram and Behance can dim our initial sparks of creativity.
what has been the proudest moment of your career?
There have been many moments in my career that have made me very proud, the problem is I rarely take time to enjoy those moments! Some of the clients we have worked with have made me really proud. We worked with Google on a branding project for a developer platform, that was super cool. But if I had to name one I think it would be about 2 years ago when my husband and I made the big decision for him to leave his job and become a stay-at-home dad which then allowed me to work full time which I had yet to do. It was a hard choice, letting go over being a stay-at-home mother to pursue this career and take it on full time with all of its ups and downs, I was really proud that I took that leap of faith and followed my dream.
how do you deal with moments of self-doubt or when facing a creative block?
I am naturally a very optimistic person so I am not too hard on myself and remind myself that it will pass. Often the best ideas are the ones that come to me when I have walked away from a project to take a breather, when I let my mind just wander and stop focusing too much energy or pressure on myself to come up with some grand idea. Most projects are like a ball of Play-Doh anyway, they are molded from the beginning to the end, it is that process that is the most exciting, not necessarily that one big idea.
any advice for young creatives wanting to break into the design field?
Do I ever! I would start by reaching out to people you look up to, even when you think you will never hear back from them. Networking with like-minded creatives is very important, you will learn from them and they will learn from you. Putting yourself out there and getting out of your comfort zone was a big one for me, an important step in starting your business. There were opportunities over the years for me to present at speaking events, conferences and other events and I was SO nervous but never said no because I knew there was no way I could pass up a chance to talk about what I loved to do. There are a lot of opinions on generating designs for free, for myself, I didn’t say yes to everything but I did find projects that I felt would be rewarding such as working with nonprofits and offering my services at no charge to help their organization. I think the biggest piece of advice would be to rethink your path often and assess where you are at. I used to be so stuck on the notion that I needed to live in a huge city, have a massive office which would hold a team of creatives, we would wear our fancy shoes and drink overpriced coffee, I thought this is what defined success for me. It wasn’t until I read “A Company Of One” by Paul Jarvis that I started to rethink my priorities and vision behind the company and actually stepped back to move forward. I now take time to observe where we are at with the business and see where we can go from that point to not only bringing in cool new projects but to keep having fun and loving what we do.
do you have any future projects coming up that you could share with us?
Yes of course. We are working on a branding project for a very cool start-up in NYC called Leisurely. We are working on their identity, branding, and marketing materials. The reason I share this project is that this client was one of the biggest that had come to us for work and I was really nervous. I was nervous that I wasn’t going to produce something they loved, afterall, I am just a designer from Maine, working out of my house, they could have hired any design agency in NYC but they picked us. Towards the end of this project, while we were on a conference call with the client, we received one of the best compliments to date: “In all the years we have worked with creatives, there have only been 3 designers that have actually understood our vision and really listened to what we wanted, you are now one of those designers.”
if you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Graceland by Paul Simon
thank you andrea!
We hope you enjoyed this Q&A. To learn more about Andrea and Studio Linear, check out her social media accounts below:
Instagram: @studiolinear
Pinterest: @studiolinear
Website: studiolinear.com
Adobe Live Day 1
Adobe Live Day 2
You can check out all of our past Q&A’s here.
Is it the weekend yet?
Elle