We were lucky to catch up with Casey Walsh recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Casey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Branding has always been my passion because it is visual storytelling. I knew I wanted to tell a unique story with my brand, something inspiring, intriguing and emblematic of me as designer. On a summer night in June of 2020, the lonely and isolating start to the never-ending pandemic,I watched lightning bugs glowing in the park across the street from my apartment. I’ve loved them since I was a child and knew in that moment that my brand would somehow reference them. I wanted to avoid being generic or cute, which is challenging when creating a brand around a bug that looks like a mythical fairy. So, I dug a little deeper and did some research below the cliche surface (a vital part of any branding project), and where I landed was almost too perfect: the name Candlefly. A candle fly is a moth that is attracted to lights at night, especially during the summer months. I am known for burning the midnight oil and working late into the night- it’s when I thrive. Additionally, when spring turns to summer my creativity always seems the flourish, similar to how these creatures emerge in the warmer months. Visually, the wings of a moth are intricate, often beautiful designs. And just like these bugs, I am always drawn to flames, whether they be a new idea, a design challenge or a new adventure. I felt immediately connected to these late-night, fire-loving summer bugs, and thus, Candlefly Studio was born; a testament to how something good can fly right out of the flame. Rough times at the start of the pandemic pushed me to start my own business, and in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
Visual storytelling has always been in my DNA. As a kid I was always drawing, turning letters and numbers into little people and objects, creating patters, sketching outfits, arranging spaces for my dolls and full on collaging my entire bedroom. College, where I eventually learned about Graphic Design. I was relieved to know that there was this huge sea of opportunity that landed somewhere rational between my desire to be an architect (too much math) and fine arts (too much art). The Vis Comm program felt like it was designed for exactly me, incorporating art, science, philosophy, psychology and technology. It felt like magic to creatively problem solve with functional, applicable purpose. It took many years of technical training, conceptualizing, critiquing, and creating to learn how to make my big ideas translate visually, and that muscle was flexed harder as a got my first job at an interactive design agency. It was sink or swim time, and to my delight, it all clicked. I swam. And I was good at swimming, I loved it. I eventually craved more and moved on to a full-service agency where I worked on everything under the sun, from brand guides to ad campaigns to packaging design to health care commercials. Agency life can be extremely demanding of your time and energy, but this was the push I needed to get to the next level of my design career and to diversify my skillset. I left with all of the tools to feel confident enough to solve any design problem, and soon after I started my own design business. Branding (logos & identity systems) is my absolute passion and my favorite type of work, because together with your client you are creating a systematic visual toolkit to set them apart and tell their story. That’s a very powerful thing, and it’s the most rewarding work I get to do. I love bringing clients along in the journey to learn what it takes to create a truly impactful, successful brand. The range of additional types of design work I do is quite wide, including things like event design, article/magazine layout, packaging, invitations, brochures, websites (UX/UI), advertising, you name it. Design is a never ending learning experience, which I think is what makes it such an amazing field to be in. Designers are problem solvers, so it’s our job to become experts on whatever we are designing for. It sometimes feels like I’ve gotten a masters degree after working on a project for a few months, and the learning process is one of the coolest aspects of the job. Who knew that all of my creative childhood hobbies would end up heavily influencing my career.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I graduated from a great design program, my optimism was through the roof and I was thrilled to start working. So naturally, I moved away to a new city, far from my network, my friends and my resources. I was sure I’d get hired at a cool design shop immediately, what with my portfolio of all student projects and zero real world experience. As you might imagine, it didn’t quite go that way, and winter in Minneapolis was coming.
This was 2011 before job searching and social networking was what it is today, and finding work felt like finding a needle in a haystack. As weeks passed, I began to fully panic.It dawned on me that I’d naively embarked on this journey without a major skillset: the ability to land a design job. I had worked since I was 14, but I was eager to finally work in my profession. My schooling prepared me for the basics, but finding design work in an unknown city was an absolute nightmare. One day, about three months into trying to pay rent with no job, I finally got an email responding to my application for an internship. An amazing, women-run branding firm wanted to interview me! This sounded like my dream job, and I went to the interview and nailed it. I knew I could get hired if someone would just give me the opportunity to meet in person!
I’d imagined lots of inspiring conversations and collaboration, people furiously rushing around and doing creative exercises and making things and teaching things, similar to school but more refined. Let’s just say the internship was not what I expected. The tiny, four-woman team of unassuming but intensely talented introverts, all of whom had years of experience on me, terrified me. I felt like an imposter. I was afraid to ask questions and I was terrified to fail, and I felt the constant pressure of what felt like their silent judgment. When I put my designs up on the wall next to the others I realized how much I didn’t know yet. My designs weren’t great, sometimes even sloppy. My creativity seemed to have completely vanished. I wanted the rest of them to be louder and sloppier so I felt more comfortable. I knew I wasn’t doing well when the boss tasked me, once again, with organizing the file archives. I could sense that she wasn’t fond of me, and I started to resent her for it. Leaving each night was a sigh of relief, but the morning filled me with existential dread. I wasn’t a badass designer like I thought. I didn’t know as much as I thought. I didn’t think the same way they thought. I felt like I was failing them, and myself. About a week after the boss sat down next to me and told me I should probably reconsider my career path, I came into the office and did something I’d never done in my life – I quit. I left the office and I cried in the street and called my partner to express the joy and terror of what I’d just done. I was not a quitter, but I knew she was wrong about me, despite my less than stellar performance as an intern. And though the relief was extreme it dawned on me almost instantly that I had to start again from scratch. Six months later, after desperately getting a job in a liquor store and a waitressing job to pay the bills, I finally got an interview for a design job. Four weeks of waiting for a call back only to learn I didn’t get the job finally broke my spirit. In a handful of months I’d harshly learned about debt, desperation, and the soul-crushing pressure of failure. There were times when I was kept late closing the restaurant until 3am, only to have to make my way to my apartment soon with snow falling outside in negative ten degree weather, and I thought about how differently my life was going than how I’d imagined it. This experiment had failed, and I was beaten down and exhausted. Not to mention, it was the coldest winter of my life. I had to move home to St. Louis.
After about a month of rest I got to it. I was over feeling this way. I tapped into my network, talked to anyone and everyone, and hit the pavement rebuilding my path, trying to catch up. A friend eventually connected me to an internship at Fleishman Hillard and from there I got an interview at an interactive design agency and my own apartment. I was working and was good at it and could pay my bills, and I finally felt like I had gotten my start, be it almost 2 years later than expected.
I often think about that internship and what started as resentment turned into something more poignant: that it’s not alyway sunshine and rainbows in the beginning, no matter how badly you want it. I always felt like design was the right path for me, even when my boss told me to reconsider. Since then I have worked on numerous design teams, created solid work, and made my way to senior art director. I have made lasting design friendships and have built a monster network that keeps me in business today. I own my own design business, and I am the exact opposite of the anxious, lost, imposter designer from a decade ago. But without that experience, I may have never dug as deep to prove myself. It made me grow up and learn that the path forward is not always easy and is not always linear, and the people around you will literally change your life, for better or for worse. You have to position yourself around those who push you to grow and bring your talents forward. You can get frustrated and anxious and feel like a failure if you’re not getting what you need out of certain experiences and certain people, but it’s up to you to change your environment, not them. No one is going to change the scene for you. Ultimately, the really cold winters are going to end up being some of the best lessons you learn, and will humble you and strengthen you for the next steps .
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
My network, hard work, consistency, and kindness. When I moved back to St. Louis in 2013 I was building my professional network from scratch. I build it up slowly but surely through my previous work places, and have always made an effort to be approachable, diligent and easy to work with. In 10 years of working in my field I have made some really great friendships and the combination of past working relationships, friends who will promote my success, and self-promotion (through social media and my website) I have been lucky enough to have consistent client work for the past two years. I love my clients and the work we do together, and I don’t sleep until they get quality results. That mentality comes through and they have learned to trust me. I have also had the opportunity to work on a wide-range of amazing projects and feel my portfolio showcases my range and skillset. When I scout for new business, there is a lot of prior work experience for me to speak to and that seems to build immediate trust.
Additionally, it is kind of fascinating to see the power of social media. I begrudgingly use facebook and instagram to self-promote. It is one of my least favorite things to do, but I cannot argue with the results. When social tools are used properly, I almost always end up with new business. It is pretty amazing to have those tools available and makes acquiring new work much more attainable than it was in the past. I would guess that about 1/3 of my work in the past two years has come through social media.
Lastly, word of mouth. Simply mentioning what I do in a social setting has led to new work. Design work is in high demand, especially since the pandemic. Many people left their jobs and started their own businesses and are in need of branding and marking work. To fill the void of lost employees, it seems more companies are hiring freelance designers. I have had multiple instances where I got work just from talking to someone at a gathering and learning that they have design needs. If I then work with someone and they like what they see, they spread the word- and that type of networking is extremely powerful in my field.
Contact Info:
- Website: candleflystudio.com
- Instagram: @candleflystudio
- Facebook: Casey Walsh https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=16817436
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-walsh-5599769/