Meet Viscera Studio
by Ari Takata-Vasquez
We've officially launched our design studio-- Viscera Studio! From the beginning, the idea for Viscera (the shop) was to take a design-focused approach to retail, take the lessons from the business world, and then start a business-focused design studio. And now that idea is real! We've officially launched the design arm of the business, Viscera Studio, providing creative services for other small businesses. I've always been passionate about small, local, indie businesses and having a design studio is one way to help them thrive.
Throughout my journey into entrepreneurship, I've come to the realization that we all have certain gifts and talents, and we have a duty to share them with the world. I'll never be the person you can come to for tax questions but I'll gladly help you with laying out an editorial spread. I think the trick to being happy as a self-employed person is to find the work you love and minimize the rest. I find I'm at my personal happiest when I've got a bunch of design projects and get to solve people's really interesting problems, especially if those people are super rad small business owners hustling to make their community better.
But, you're probably still asking yourself, "haven't I already met Viscera Studio?" and the answer is sort of. All of the design work you've seen from Viscera has been done in-house, including our lookbooks, magazine, and ads. And for the last three or so years we've also been taking on on freelance jobs as they've come up organically, so odds are you've seen our work around the Town. And now as we're looking to make design services a bigger part of the Viscera brand, we're actively looking for new work! I'm so excited becasue it's feeling extra official now that we've launched our website, facebook, and instagram (you might have noticed the website URL change and handle change for the shop a couple of months ago). I'd love to hear what you think and if you have any projects we can help you with.
At Viscera Studio, Miles Bianchi (our 3D jewelry designer) and I bring a combined 15+ years of professional design and project management experience to each of our projects. We both have educational foundations in architecture and we leverage design thinking to create great work. Add into the mix, the last three years of building and developing a visual language for Viscera the brand and we've done it all-- space design, editorial and product photography, TONS of graphics, web design, and prototyping.
I'm so excited for this next step in developing Viscera. My hope is to use the studio to help our community of entrepreneurs thrive by creating great design. In these really trying times (if you read the news you know what I'm talking about) we can choose competition or collaboration and we absolutely should choose collaboration. I think collaboration is THE best tool we have in building community resilience and building a local economy where rising tides lifts all boats.
We'd love for you to follow our journey, building the design studio. Join our mailing list here.
If you have a project you'd like us to work on head over to VisceraStudio.com or email either Miles (miles@viscerastudio.com) or myself (ari@viscerastudio.com). And please, share this with your networks, I'd be so grateful.