Archive for March, 2010

I discovered the talented sisters – Janet & Trisha – behind PAWLING | print studio when they left me a comment on my blog. I immediately fell in love with their work. So, if you’re lurking back there, say hello. You may end up on my blog too. With that, allow me to introduce you to their delightful work.

Welcome. Give us some background about yourself and your business.
PAWLING | print studio is a collaboration between sisters Janet & Trisha.  We make modern handmade prints and patterns for the home.  We opened up shop in the fall shortly after graduating – Janet with an undergraduate degree in Graphic Design and Trisha with a Masters in Architecture. Despite spending very little time together in the past eight years because of school and jobs in different states, our interests seem to have independently converged and now we’re in business together!  We named ourselves PAWLING | print studio in honor of our grandfather who recently passed away.  He was a photographer and a painter at heart and always took time to teach us how to draw and paint when we were younger.  We assume he is where our “artistic” genes came from, though our mom also has some pretty sweet calligraphy skills and our dad designed the house we lived in as kids.

Pawling

The decision to take the self-employment route is not always an easy one. What gave you the confidence to take that leap?
In retrospect graduating in a down economy gave us the opportunity to try what we really wanted to do rather than what we were expected to do.  Of course that doesn’t mean we knew it at the time.  As far too many people know, searching and applying for employment is a full time job in itself, so although we weren’t giving up a job in the traditional sense, the decision to start PAWLING as a full-time venture was no small leap of faith. We had both been secretly toying with the idea while in school, but were too afraid to tell anyone.  Once we sheepishly started talking about it with each other, we found we couldn’t stop.  We were so full of ideas and excitement that we knew we had to take the idea seriously.  Now whenever either of us is having doubts the other one is there with a pep talk.  It certainly helps that we’re in it together!

Pawling

Self employment can mean long hours, irregular income and other unpredictable stresses. How you do you handle it?
Hmm, sounds just like school.  I don’t think we know any other way to live!  But instead of hypothetical projects that will undoubtedly get torn apart in a review, we get to make things that we believe in and that people will actually use.  Working for ourselves is infinitely more rewarding!  We’ve had some amazing customers who with one comment manage to make all of the stress and uncertainty worth it.  We’ve also been blown away by how supportive the online creative community is.  We probably couldn’t do it without them and we definitely couldn’t do it without the support of our family.

What’s a typical day like for you? How did you keep yourself organized to avoid procrastination and other distractions?
A typical day is following our check list, but no two days are the same.  Production days are definitely the easiest in terms of procrastination, because there are clearly defined objectives.  Brainstorming days are the most fun, though there are so many aspects to setting up a business from research and design to production and marketing that often we are overwhelmed with ideas.  For us, procrastination never seems to come from a lack of ideas, but rather from too many and a need to focus.  Making lists really helps us prioritize our goals on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  Fortunately we both like to use organization as a means of procrastination – sometimes we just can’t work until everything is in order!

PAWLING

Do your work from home? Or offsite?
We work from two homes!  We dream of an offsite studio one day, but for now we just have designated “studio areas.”

It can get lonely working for yourself. Do you find yourself missing the companionship of a bustling office? How do you make sure you get social interaction throughout the day/week?
We’re lucky that we don’t work alone!  Yes, it’s just the two of us, but that’s the way we like it!  And we find that instead of just wanting some space to ourselves on weekends, we actually look forward to spending time with our friends.

Finding a work/life balance can be difficult with any job, perhaps more so with self-employment. Do you think you’ve found that balance?
Perhaps not yet, PAWLING is still very young and changing rapidly.  We try our best to separate our evenings and weekends from work, but we’re definitely still learning.

PAWLING

What valuable lessons did you learn within your first year. Let’s start with the worst.

That’s an easy one, to start out within your means is great advice, but cutting corners is not.  For example, scoop-coaters are absolutely positively necessary for screenprinting.  We learned that the hard way.

And now the best.
It’s taken some time for us to get comfortable talking about our business to others.  While we always had confidence in our products, we really weren’t sure we could pull off the business side of things.  It was especially hard to explain PAWLING to our friends and family in the beginning before we had real products and a website. Now that we have tangible things to point to, it’s much easier for people to understand what we do.  Now instead of getting skeptical reactions from people, they are generally impressed and enthusiastic about our work.  Not only that, but a surprising number of people have since revealed that they secretly want to be more creative and that we’ve inspired them to be more proactive about their hobbies as well

Lastly, what advice would you give to others that are thinking about quitting their 9-5 job to pursue self-employment?
Not sure that we should be giving advice to anyone yet (see question 2!) but it felt right for us and so far the ups have outweighed the downs!!!

PAWLING

PAWLING ELSEWHERE
Website | Shop | Etsy | Blog | Twitter

Thank you for all your feedback yesterday on my icon. It is truly appreciated and I was thrilled to see the comments left fell inline with what emotions/feelings I hoped it would evoke.

The incorporation of the icon has already begun. Check out the new blog header.

New Blog Header

I wanted to stay true to the simplicity of my blog layout so the new update is nothing major, but I think it works.

Do you?

When I relaunched my blog at the start of the year my hope to was create a blog that provided value on various levels. While I certainly get inspiration from all of the design blogs out there, personally, the ones that draw me in the most are those that go beyond the visual worth and offer either a little piece of themselves or allow me to leave with some food for thought or knowledge. What about you?

As I continue to grow this blog, I wanted to invite you to help in that growth by sharing what you’d like to see over here. While I won’t claim to be an authority on design, business or photography, if there are any particular topics/tutorials you’d like covered, just let me know. If I can’t to the post justice myself, I’ll find someone that can.

So come on, get your requests in ladies and gents. Let’s take this blog on a fun ride together. All aboard (?).

As mentioned last week, I’m embarking on the task of designing a whole identity package for modernemotive. True to my word, the process has begun. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to dedicate a lot of time to it last week, but just the act of exploration really got my creative juices flowing so I’ll be sharing lots more over the coming weeks. While I have a slew of post ideas for this particular topic, words are escaping me right now but they’ll come. They’ll come! Don’t you hate when that happens? Anyway, I digress…

Here’s a sneak peak at the new modernemotive icon. I’ve wanted to introduce a icon for a while and I can now finally strike it off my to-do list. I’m still deciding when and where it will be used but I plan on getting labels printed so that it can be applied to product packaging, mailings etc.

modernemotive icons

What do you think?

Wow, it’s Friday already? This week has flown by. It’s been an amazing few days over here and lots of opportunities have come up that I’ll share with you over time. I hope your week was equally good to you. I’m loving March so far. How about you?

As the weekend is upon us I wanted to wish you all a fabulous weekend. We’re having Spring-like weather over here. Yah! It’s so nice to be able to open up the windows and have some fresh air blowing through.

My weekend is gearing up to be awesome. On deck I have a client meeting later tonight followed by date night with James, then tomorrow we’re having dinner/drinks with James’ work crew and then Sunday my boys arrive. Bliss!

What you got planned for the weekend?

Photo Credit: The Clockwork Universe – Check out their fab new Etsy shop full of amazing vintage clocks!

Me: “No.”

Yep, a particular stationery designer – *ahem* me *ahem* – doesn’t have a business card. Shocking isn’t it? I can’t tell you how many opportunities I’ve potentially lost due to the absence of this handy piece of paper. Yet here I still sit business card-less. Bad Adele!

I’m sure a lot of designers can identify with the fact that it is soooooo hard to design for yourself. As a perfectionist already, it hits an all time extreme when it comes to hiring myself.

As I’m preparing to contact retailers and other venues to spread the word about modernemotive, I’ve decided to jump in and design a whole identity package for myself. It’ll include letterheads, envelopes, labels, packaging design… the whole shebang. Let the fun begin!

I plan on sharing the process here on my blog so if you don’t hear from me about on this matter within a few weeks, please give me a nudge. I’m hiring you as my virtual Project Managers… sound good? You in?

And while we’re at it, please tell me I’m not the only one missing an important piece of their business puzzle? It feels lonely up in here.

Photo Credit: Kevin Steele

There appears to be this collective relief out there as we say goodbye to February 2010. For a short month, it seemed so long didn’t it?

Despite it’s up and downs, February taught me a lot. I don’t know about you, but whenever things aren’t going so great, I always need to find a positive in there in order for me to move forward.

Now that March is upon us it’s time to start setting up my goals for this month. If I were to look at what was achieved in February in terms of tangible goals, I could easily feel as though I failed. Yet I now realize I didn’t.

February may of driven me to some personal lows but it also forced me to take an honest and hard look at what the hell was going on. As a result, I came out stronger and happier than ever. That my friends was the best thing I could ever of done for my company.

So as I set up my goals to grow modernemotive this month, I’m going to make sure I nurture myself too. Sure, I want my company to be running at it’s best but I need to make sure I am too so that we bloom together.

Hello March. I’m ready for you!

Are you ready? What are your goals this month?

Photo Credit: StevenBrisson

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