We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dionna Hayden. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dionna below.

Hi Dionna, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

With my graphic design company, Pink Elephant Graphic Design, I provide creative services aimed at crafting beautiful design projects by infusing art with design. My specialties include brand identity, logo design, and publication design layout.

My process for project success involves forging personable connections with my clients, which allows me to fully immerse myself in their brand and mission. This approach enables me to deliver what I like to call “home-cooked” design. Additionally, I employ a strategic and thorough approach, ensuring my clients are involved and educated at every step of the project to guarantee that every objective is met with excellence.

While many in the creative industry focus on quick, “microwave solutions” or prioritize capitalistic gains over customer service, I concentrate on qualities that build trust and accountability. These qualities are crucial for ensuring that clients feel safe and informed when investing in my services. The knowledge they gain acts as tools, enhancing their confidence to make more informed decisions about their brand. My clients have worked very hard to build their brands, and I am dedicated to protecting and helping them thrive. I fully empathize with these sentiments and serve that space of understanding.

In addition to Pink Elephant, I have created my own children’s book imprint called Lucky Boots. It specializes in presenting diverse characters and relatable stories for children while building healthy connections with their parents and/or guardians. The goal is to instill a love of learning and enjoying the life journey.

Ever since I was a toddler, I have loved literature and books. My mother would read stories to me and my sister before bedtime, and it was always a treat to watch and listen as stories unfolded. Unfortunately, as a little Black girl in the 1980s, I found very few stories with characters that looked like me, which made me feel invisible and disconnected from the world around me. By the time I was 6, I had decided and proclaimed to my mother that I wanted to be an illustrator. As an adult, I created Lucky Boots to give children who feel unseen in media and literature a place where they can see themselves, and where others can enjoy stories that are relatable to every child.

Moreover, I create books that allow parents to sit with their children and help them navigate life’s journey through the lessons depicted in each story. This reflects the bonding experiences I had with my sister and mother growing up, and what my husband and I have fostered with our own children. In fact, my book series, called The Cookie-Flower Rock Kids, is published under my imprint, Lucky Boots, and is based on my actual children.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I wear a few different hats that somewhat overlap: graphic artist, designer, author, and illustrator.
My discipline in fine arts and my curiosity for commercial art began as soon as I could hold a pencil. My love for art has always been a part of me, making it natural to hone my artistic abilities throughout my life. When I was a toddler, my mother, who was studying commercial art, would sometimes take me to her classes. There, I saw firsthand the students at work, and I always felt like I belonged in that classroom. Therefore, upon graduating from a high school for the arts, I pursued graphic arts in higher education. Along the journey, my love for literature inspired me to design and illustrate books that I wanted to see in the world.

After years of working in the creative industry and developing my niche, passion, and formal training, I established Pink Elephant Graphic Design in 2010. This business caters to clients seeking quality “home-cooked”, art-centered graphic design with white-glove service. At Pink Elephant, I am widely known for a couple of specialties, including print design and lively color selection and application. My most popular services include brand identity, logo design, and publication layout and design.

In 2015, I founded Lucky Boots, a children’s book imprint dedicated to producing the diverse and positive imagery in books that I longed to see growing up. One of my flagship projects for the imprint is the children’s book series The Cookie-Flower Rock Kids. This series revolves around three siblings—based on my own children—as they learn about life and the world around them from their unique and colorful perspectives. Each relatable story includes a ‘parent soapbox’ at the end, which helps parents and children connect the lessons back to their own lives through quality conversations. I designed this series to spark a love of reading and lifelong learning in children, while also building stronger communities through the vehicle of quality mentorship. Another title from the imprint, Devin’s Dress, features illustrations and design by me, with authorship by my daughter, Devin L. Hayden. Devin wrote the book at the age of 7. It began as a fun home activity aimed at creating a book she had never seen before, and over time we developed it into a published work by her 13th birthday.

I am most proud of my work because it took significant time to find my creative voice and discover how I could use it to not only enrich my own life and creative journey but also to help others in theirs. Everything I do is driven by a conviction to do my best, be fair, and leave a positive mark in our community and world. I am also proud to provide my clients and readers with the kind of attentive and excellent work that brings them joy.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

When I decided to start my freelancing business, a former coworker who believed in my vision generously gifted me her computer system, complete with all the necessary graphic design software. This grand gesture enabled me to work from home. Gradually, I used my earnings to cover additional business expenses, allowing my business to grow slowly and steadily. At that time, the ability to work from home was especially valuable, as it enabled me to flexibly manage both my professional responsibilities and my role as a mom to twin toddlers, and later, to our newborn son. Furthermore, my highly supportive husband, Kyle, who also believed in my vision, worked tirelessly to ensure I had everything I needed to build my career and achieve my professional goals. Over time, with the foundational tools that were gifted to me at the outset, I was able to build my business and start my publishing imprint with minimal overhead costs and without incurring any debt.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I began developing my children’s book series, The Cookie-Flower Rock Kids, deciding on a concept and completing the preliminary design work for Book #1: Moving Day took a very long time. After I had created nearly twenty hand-drawn, outlined illustrations for the book, while simultaneously working on my freelancing projects, I encountered a major setback. At that time, cloud storage wasn’t as refined as it is today. So, when I was carefully transferring files to a new computer system, the hard drive of my brand-new computer crashed, destroying many of my files that were stored in the cloud. Thankfully, I was able to spare and recover many of my current client projects. However, many important files, including my first draft illustrations for my book, were completely gone. I felt devastated and deflated, but I refused to allow this setback to bench me. I gave myself time to be upset but also set a timeline to get back on track and start over. Not only did I redo my book illustrations, but they also ended up being much better than the first drafts, allowing me to complete my very first book as both author and illustrator. I view this as a huge win-win in more ways than one. I grew to respect hardships because they challenge us to get out of our comfort zones and grow. Even now, over a decade later, I still look to this situation as encouragement that I can overcome hardships by setting goals and working towards them, one step at a time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dionnalhayden.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/didilhayden
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dionnalhayden/
• Other: www.thinkpegd.com
  www.getluckyboots.com
  www.cfrkids.com
  www.behance.net/DionnaLHayden