Review of Q1
As I’m writing this, it is the first day of Spring. I spent last weekend at the Brooklyn Botanical garden, looking at the magnolia buds beginning to emerge, the daffodils brightly arriving early in the season, and some new growth starting to pop-up from the cool ground. If you know about the other hat I wear as an ‘artist’, I create botanical murals and illustrations. I find that some of the best business/work lessons I’ve learned come from understanding and appreciating nature— most importantly the seasons. While it might not seem like the most intuitive connection to business or running a design studio, nature always reminds me that there are seasons for a reason— there’s a time and place for everything. For us, Winter is a time for creating fertile ground for ideas and for quiet. It’s a time to prepare for the rapid growth and unpredictability of Spring’s changes.
As we roll into Spring and our second quarter, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the ways that Winter has set us up for Spring, some of the exciting new things we’re planting and ready to nurture and grow. As you all might recall, we took a bit of time off at the end of the year to relax, recuperate, and prepare for 2023. We really value rest and taking care of ourselves at Viscera Studio. It might not seem that notable, but the norm for design agencies is overwork and burnout. We find that when we’re all well rested and cared for, we’re able to plan better, create stronger work, and generate more innovative ideas (you can read more about our 4-day workweek here). In Winter we also took the time to set our priorities for 2023 and what we want to accomplish this year. In many ways, it was just as important to us to know what we’re not going to do as it was for us to lay out our goals.
In looking back at Winter (or Q1), here are some of the things we’ve worked on with much more to come in this season.
We’re in the process of finally redesigning our website to better reflect our work and focus on doing purposeful work. (Shoutout to my amazing team for keeping the momentum behind this project, because I know if it were up to me the website would still be ‘under development’ until 2024.)
We’re also continuing to work with mission-aligned organizations we love such as LISC, EBPREC, CMCP, and SFHDC. Much of our work is transitioning from the planning and development phase into implementation. By Summer, I think we’ll have some of the early fruits of our labor ready to share more widely with you all.
We also continued to support our existing clients as their off-site marketing team to implement strategic plans and on-going website management. P.s. if you aren’t on Ayodele Nzinga/Lower Bottom Playaz or In The Black’s e-newsletters or following them on social media, you’re missing out.
I’m excited to share that we won the Richmond 1.5% for the Art’s Public Art project and we will be creating a permanent art installation in Kennedy Park alongside amazing artist, Tiffany Conway (lots more about this soon!).
Looking ahead this Spring, I can foresee a lot of growth. When I think about the types of projects we’re working on, I feel immensely proud of our studio and the work that we’re making a reality through design. I feel especially proud of our team that we’re continuing to develop the studio and expand while prioritizing balance and self-care (we’re still loving our 4-day work weeks!). As we continue to strive to do purposeful work, we want to meet more organizations and people who are values-align and are working towards a more equitable future prioritizing our communities of color, our small business communities, and our cities. Know someone we should know? Send them this post or drop us a line.