We run a studio in NYC called Super Keen, and we are officially one year old! Like any parent of a teeny tiny infant, we’ve learned a lot. We were inspired by the transparency and detail of Ian’s reports at Gardener, and wanted to talk openly about the highs and lows of bringing Super Keen to life.
We hope this helps people thinking about starting their own studio, or perhaps already running one and thinking you’re all alone. We believe there is always enough work to go around and by sharing resources we can create a network of thriving small businesses.
We launched our studio on March 8, 2021. Here’s what a first year (or roughly ten months) for first-time studio founders looked like. Let’s dive in!
CONTENTS
Super Keen is a brand studio that works with early-stage founders.
We believe the best brands are built from two things: strategy and design. Strategy makes design cohesive and connected. Design makes strategy stand up in the world. But putting them together—that’s when the magic really happens.
We love building brand foundations. This often means creating a brand from scratch or expanding on a growing system. The common goal is crafting stories and systems that are scalable and allow you to make brand decisions easily. That often includes to:
Cultural Research
Brand Positioning
Design Strategy
Naming
Brand Architecture
Nomenclature
Verbal Identity
Visual Identity
Art Direction
Brand Guidelines
Website Design + Copy
Print Design
Packaging Design
Environmental Design
There’s some context for 2021 that’s worth mentioning. It’s still a global pandemic, for one, and Gabby was in Australia switching onto a new E3 visa (which was a whole ordeal of itself). That meant for the launch and first 5 months in biz, we were on opposite sides of the world with Gabby waking up way too early and Lauren staying up way too late.
At the start, we said yes to pretty much everything. We bit off a lot—sometimes too much—to chew on. But we also think that’s what helped us refine our offering. It helped us figure out how we provide the most value as a team AND what projects we actually enjoyed working on.
We knew that design phases took longer than strategy phases, but definitely underestimated how often our clients would come back with new projects. This meant that Gabby got bottlenecked with client work and Lauren took on other things: SK’s bookkeeping, project management, and comms with our wonderful lawyer and accountant (who we have leaned on A LOT). Strategy was in hot demand for freelance, and a lot of our 2021 income came from Lauren working with other studios. We realized this was good for our timelines but bad for working as a duo. Ultimately, our favorite projects were always ones we worked on together.