Voyage Austin

Conversations with Gabrielle Blades

Full transcript below

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabrielle Blades.

Hi Gabrielle, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was a kid, I would pretend to have a greeting card business in our sunroom and tried to sell art classes at recess. Despite all of that, I never thought of myself as a “business owner” — or someone who would someday own her own business.

My parents were also very entrepreneurial, so I feel like it was instilled in me. My mom owned a hair salon and my dad was a petroleum consultant. They built and sold houses together on the side. They had LLCs, but “entrepreneurship” wasn’t really a term they used. They called it self-employed. Mom did a lot of the paperwork (and still does) for their apartments, and Dad built them. Mom was often there to help build.

I went to school for graphic design and thought I would go into web design, but I ended up hating that side of design. I enjoyed the conceptual artwork but also expected to leave school and work for an agency or doing in-house work for a more corporate office.

Turns out, I actually started my career in design working with the city of Chattanooga, doing research design for a multimodal transportation study. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but it taught me that I loved doing work that could make a bigger difference. It also helped me learn how to interact in many types of situations, as well as allowed me to meet many people in the community. During my time working with the city, I picked up a part-time contract with a nonprofit that supported local entrepreneurs @launchcha. I found that I loved working with the entrepreneurs to build their dreams, and I also realized I was doing something similar with my part-time job with the city while picking up more design work on the side. When my city job was about to come to an end, I prepared by getting my Sole Proprietorship and an EIN. Six months later, I finally made my own logo so I could market myself. Even with that, I continued to look for potential full-time design jobs while also taking on my own clients and eventually realized I was working full-time for myself. It took a long time to even realize I was a business owner, but when I got my own office space I really felt real and ready to grow.

In the last few years, I grew out of the first version of Blades Creative and went through my own rebrand. As life goes on, you grow and change, and it was time for my business to do the same. I wanted the business to feel more aligned with who I was and where I wanted to go. With that came change came Blades Creative *Design Studio* (addition of design studio), a new visual brand, and a new audience/brand voice. We offer intuitive, impactful branding, packaging and design for womxn entrepreneurs, creatives, and wellness businesses. We believe in collaboration and creation that tells a story and brings magic into your interactions. We dig deep and get to know not only our clients but their audiences as well. Our design process is a true partnership from beginning to end — and will help you bring the next (aka best) version of your business to life.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Navigating starting a business was interesting and very slow…. I feel like I am still learning how to manage things better every day even after six years because every year in business brings new and bigger challenges. It took me a little while to actually commit to it even after I put my initial branding and marketing out there. It was something no one else my age (I was 24 when I started the business), especially other designers, was doing at the time. It felt risky and alternative. Once I did commit to going out on my own, I made the decision to be a business rather than a freelancer because I feel like the term freelancer is seen so differently by the people who hire them. I wanted to feel more long-term and solidified than that.

Looking back, the first few years were a time where I was trying to gain respect as a young woman who owned a creative business. I once had been asked if it was my husband’s business, and I often got asked if I could “make something pretty” for a potential client. In regards to sexism and being taken seriously as a creative, I put on a very buttoned-up and serious approach to my networking and branding for about four years.

Overall, I was trained as a fine artist and designer, but no one ever taught me how to be a business owner in a formal way. The trial and error of earning your street cred MBA is difficult but worth every learning moment.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My small-but-mighty team serves as the advocate and designer for creative, lifestyle, and wellness brands, bringing their purpose and potential out into the world.

We offer…

 Intuitive and intentional branding, design, and packaging options for businesses of any size.
 Intentional and collaborative, beginning with a deep-dive discovery into your brand.
 Real pen-and-paper creation to let truly organic designs come to life.

Branding Design…

Blades Creative creates intuitive, impactful branding for your creative business. We believe in collaboration and creation that tells a story and brings magic into your interactions. We dig deep and get to know not only our clients but their audiences as well. Our design process is a true partnership from beginning to end. That’s why we’ve crafted brand packages that help us harness what is uniquely yours and deliver branding and assets that match your needs and goals for the business.

Packaging Design…

We believe in collaboration, creation, and packaging design that tells a story and brings an unforgettable experience to your physical products.

We dig deep and get to know how you want your customers to feel and how you want your products to be represented in the market. Our package design process is a true partnership from beginning to end, and you’ll get to see your brand literally come to life.

One that feels organic and aligned to your customers and your business. To bring that experience to life, it requires a whole lot of design experience and more than a dash of intuition.

Creative partnerships and ongoing design…

Want our keen attention to detail and intuitive understanding of your brand on deck? We offer monthly retainer partnerships with select clients. This level of collaboration and creation is one of our favorite ways to work, and it’s a fantastic way to support your recent brand creation or package design.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
The privilege to continue to grow and the freedom to welcome change. I don’t think success is one particular thing on any given day. Some days success may look like getting a solid 8 hours of client work in, and other days success may look like taking the time to go outside or allowing myself an entire weekend to watch Bravo TV and not look at my computer. Today, success looks like Blades Creative and life as it is, and five years from now, I may feel the need to shift again to find success. As long as we are able to grow, learn, and welcome change, success will find us.