We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amanda Guerassio a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Amanda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful projects for me are the ones where I’m helping a client turn their dream into reality. It’s why I specialize in branding, as that’s what branding is at its core: shaping your vision for your business into something concrete and communicable.

The best example of this to-date is the work I’ve done partnering with Derek Law of Slackers Brewing Co. in northwest Austin. When we started working together, he was home-brewing beers in his garage, and only had a grand vision for what he wanted to build as a business – no location, no equipment, no funding yet. We started with the brand exploration to really get clear on what he wanted Slackers to grow into. From there, I built a base visual brand and some mockups, and he used some of those assets when he launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the remodel of a storefront location. It was successful, raising around 125% of the original amount, and the ball was rolling.

Slackers has officially had its doors open for two and a half years now, and during that time I’ve helped on touchpoints all across the brand: print materials, website, merch, signage, even paint color consultation. And it is SO SO cool to be able to walk into his place, see the work I’ve done, see what he’s built and the how the vibe and community are exactly what he was aiming for, and it just feels GOOD. It is cool to see how for some things (social media, the beer board) he’s expanded the brand on its own, too. I am proud of the work we did together, and proud of what he’s built, and would love a hundred more clients like him.

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

I’m a brand strategist and designer that partners with serial entrepreneurs, strivers, freedom seekers and multi-passionate empire-builders to craft branding that feels right, works hard and looks awesome. I bring a holistic, structured approach to branding that helps you make your next level of business the best one yet.

I’ve been intrigued by the intersection of art and technology for as long as home computers have been around. After growing up crafting scenes in Bryce 3D and playing around with Photoshop in art class, I inevitably pursued graphic design as my degree and my career. Almost 20 years later, I’m still in love with design and have developed a particular specialty in branding. Bringing a client’s vision and story to life through branding (as I did for Slackers Brewing!) is what lights me up.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I’m picking this question, as I actually just started a new side hustle in November, and am curious/eager to see where it takes me.

It’s called Books & Brands, and it’s where I’m exploring the possibilities of AI-generated imagery. The tagline is “Bringing your stories to life with the help of AI” – and those stories can be for books or businesses. With AI tools like Midjourney, I’m able to realize art pieces that were WAY beyond my capabilities as an illustrator before, which is really exciting and fun to play with. I’m a huge bookworm, and my interest in fantasy, mythology, books and symbolism has found a new outlet. My personal style gravitates toward depicting the magical and fictional in a photorealistic way, making the unreal appear real.

Having just started in November, it definitely has not become a full-time business yet. But I have accrued over 1,000 followers on Instagram in that short time, and been invited to take over a gallery wall for an art installation of my pieces (and even sold one!). I’m still working on the branding (the cobbler’s children have no shoes situation), so the website isn’t really up yet. But it’s giving me a fun creative outlet and possible new revenue stream, so we’ll see where it goes.

I’d been playing around with AI-generated art for a little bit, and was really intrigued by it, and how it could be used for things like book covers, social media images, ad images, etc. and there was just something inside me that was like “Ok, you need to actual see what you can do with this.” I have enough income otherwise that I don’t have to rely on Books & Brands for that, so that allows me to take me time and see what I want to do with it. It’s my goal this quarter to get the website up and running, and have a services deck put together.

I do have one client for Studio Guerassio who is cool with me generating some images for them via AI, so they’re acting as a kind of case study for how business/brands can use this new tool.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

The funny thing about starting a new Instagram account for Books & Brands and sharing my art there, is that I’ve gotten tons of requests/DMs for my art as NFTs. To be honest, I mostly don’t see the point of NFTs, and it’s certainly not a direction I’m going to pursue for making money from my work. I think for digital art especially, where the line between ownership and copyright is super blurry, and it’s so easy to duplicate and screen-grab things, it seems like more headache than it’d be worth to use as an income channel.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.studioguerassio.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/studioguerassio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandaguerassio
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/booksnbrands/