An announcement that has been a long time coming.
Today, Chara is joining Smith & Diction full time!
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Some folks already knew this, but Chara has had a full time job outside of S&D since we started the business. She’s the reason we could build a studio that we truly believed in with a client list of people we trust. We never had to sacrifice design quality to pay the bills. She gave me (Mike) the space to build something sustainable that she could join ~*OnE DaY*~. Well, today is that day and we couldn’t be happier.
To say this is a long time coming would be an understatement. Anyone that knows us knows that Chara is smart, she’s tenacious, she’s kind, she’s understanding, and she works harder than any person I’ve ever met all while coming off like she’s not trying at all. After thinking about how to grow the studio after this pandemic reset, we decided it was finally time for her to join the company. She was the missing piece. We’ve been joking to friends that she will be Smith & Diction’s new CEO, copy chief, head of accounts, project manager, and jr. designer. And we’re just excited to finally sit together with one common goal: grow Smith & Diction.
When we started S&D, a few people advised us to *look* big. Take on big jobs and contract out all the work. Make BIG moves, take big risks, build a massive portfolio!
But that was the opposite of what we wanted. We wanted to be picky. I wanted to design…everything. We wanted to come up with the ideas and then make them, not hand them off and pray they’d come out right. In traditional agencies, there’s this weird pressure to become a manager to be “successful.” That you should be billing more, while doing less of the actual work. We sat down and said, “That’s not for us.”
Today, I want to say that it’s okay to grow slow. It’s easy to look at your friends, acquaintances, and just the general internet and be like, “Damn, they have it all!” Every day I compare myself to other design studios/agencies and get jealous. “If only I could work on XYZ or make ABC.” But I’m working on S&D and starting today, Chara and I are both going to give that our 110%. Today my wife and partner is joining the company I built for her. And we’re going to keep building this company together.
