Happy birthday to us! Happy birthday to us 🥳
Today marks the one-year anniversary of launching Steinh Studio, a huge, celebratory milestone that we honestly weren’t sure we’d make it to. It’s been one hell of a year, so let’s recap!
When we decided we wanted to start our own studio, we thought we had a pretty good grasp on who we were as designers and how we wanted to present ourselves. The branding came easy, and so did the website. But as we came up on the one-year mark, the website started to feel a little stale and inauthentic to how we wanted to come across. Admittedly, we took ourselves a bit too seriously the first go-around, which led to our site feeling, in our own words, "fart-sniffy.”
Now, with some projects under our belt and a feel for how we like to run things, we have the confidence to step into what we always wanted Steinh Studio to be. We’re goofy, down-to-earth people, and we want our business to reflect that. So, our website refresh is chock-full of quirky illustrations (and even some Easter eggs), some spiffy new headshots, and our messaging actually sounds like how we speak. The result is a more fully realized Steinh, ready to take its first steps into toddlerhood.
The decision to start Steinh was born out of us both being totally burnt out from our corporate design jobs. We wanted to take a step back, put ourselves in the driver’s seat, and figure out how to do the work we wanted while still having a good work-life balance. We were excited, so we dove right in, pouring ourselves into creating portfolio pieces and social content, writing blogs, and attending networking event after networking event. The result? You guessed it—even more burnout.
A few months in, we were exhausted. So we stopped everything. We took some time to reflect, even went on a few small vacations, and took stock of what was working and what needed to go. We realized we’d been trying to live up to expectations that we thought other people had of us and weren’t actually doing the things that served us best. We hated posting on Instagram (bye!), blogging was fun but took up way too much time (see ya!), and conceptual work was just a way to fill the void when we didn’t have projects on the go (adios!), which wasn’t a problem anymore. Cutting out all the things we didn’t enjoy helped us uncover what was actually working for us: networking. We go to a lot less networking events now, but the connections we’ve made have led to clients, friendships, and even an interest in putting on our own event in the future.
And after many months of dialing things back, I’m happy to report that we finally don’t feel burnt out and very much plan to keep it that way.
Steinh’s birthday isn’t the only first we’re celebrating around here! Opening our own business led to so many new and exciting milestones, including our first branding project, first website, first package design, and putting on our first presentation. There are two firsts though that really stick out as reminders of why we started our own studio.
The first is taking on an intern. We never imagined we’d have this opportunity so soon and how much we’d love it. Not only did we get to support a student going through the exact same program we did, but we learned a hell of a lot about being mentors. We realized for the first time that we’d eventually love to expand past being a studio of two and grow our team.
The other first is a very recent one. Last week, we had the opportunity to lead a team at this year’s Creative Day for Social Good, a design sprint that benefits non-profit organizations all across the country. Having participated in this event as students, it was very surreal to come back as “industry professionals." There’s way too much to unpack about how much we loved and learned from this event, so look out for a whole blog about it soon.
And that’s all, folks! There’s so much more we could say about our first year, the incredibly high highs and low lows, but we’ll wrap it up with some gratitude. Thank you to anyone that’s supported us over this first year, whether you liked a post, read a blog, worked with us, or cheered us on from afar. Our friends, family, and design community really showed up for us throughout this whirlwind year, and we’re so grateful for it.
Now to go pop some champagne and get back to work!
