When the first lockdown was announced, not only did we have to find a way to keep the studio running through the challenges of a global pandemic – we also had 2-month-old twins. With the twins being so young, it was difficult to find a balance between trying to keep the business afloat, while worrying about the health of our new family.
The introduction of ‘stay home’ in the first lockdown meant we could no longer use the studio space, so we created a mini setup at home in the master bedroom.
This allowed me to have a place to retreat; where I could continue to run the studio’s day-to-day tasks and work on creative projects. I found having a quiet corner to work from was essential for focus while the studio space was out of bounds.
Like most sectors, we found the first six months of Covid pretty hard. Many clients stopped or drastically cut down their need for our services. Although, we did see some start-ups in need of branding emerge from the mass of redundancies. We saw Cult Salon, Koru and Wythe and Bo come in as new clients, all in need of brands and logos designed to kick-start their businesses. It was really encouraging to see these smaller businesses push through the pandemic and trust us with their branding and website design needs.
While COVID-19 brought its challenges, it did teach us to work in different ways, consider our work-life balance and fully appreciate what we have as a family. Now we’re on the other side of the pandemic, we’ve taken some of these new ways of working and thinking into how we run the studio going forward.