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

Cinthia , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

I immigrated to Miami from Cuba with my mother in the late 90’s. I saw her struggle, and heard the adults talk of hopes to earn work permits, make more than minimum wage, maybe even earn back their licenses to practice medicine and earn over $25 an hour! During college, while attending fashion school (I focus on murals and illustration now) I took a full time job at Best Buy to take advantage of their tuition reimbursement program which covered a small percentage of my college costs. You can imagine my surprise when my fashion illustration teacher – who designed textile prints on the side – offered me $85 for the doodles on my margin, and $85 for any page containing a collection of at least 5 themed doodles I could bring him in the future. I was thrilled, my mom was thrilled, and I had a blast designing pages with themes like puppies, cats, sleepovers, owls, and other kids illustrations he would then turn into textile prints. Did I leave my first job? Not til my last semester; I was young and foolish. But this extra side gig did teach me from an early age that making money off of my art was not only attainable, but sustainable and profitable – and that it was ok to dream bigger than the adults around me who made every sacrifice necessary to put me in the position to draw kittens for a living. Now, I run a creative studio that creates murals and illustrations for all sorts of businesses. I get to illustrate a lot of Cuban themes, in my signature style, and still sneak in a puppy or kitten into my designs when appropriate.

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

My name is Cinthia and, along with my partner and husband Ben, I co-founded Chalk and Brush – a creative studio based out of Miami that creates murals, signage, and illustration for all sorts of brands and businesses. I originally worked in fashion, designing textiles and garments as well as overseeing design for a local brand that shipped to department stores and boutiques around the country.

In 2013, after having lost my job, I was contacted by two designers who had seen me dabbling with my first ever mural outside of my employer’s studio in Wynwood during Miami Art Week the previous December. They asked if I could letter a chalkboard menu for a Bagel shop and, having never lettered, I naturally said yes. I undercharged for this project and spent over a week at it, but posting it on Instagram led to other local businesses reaching out for the same service as well as sign painting, and eventually muraling! My then boyfriend, Ben, was working as a nurse when we met in 2013 and, having some graffiti experience, started to tag along on jobs and helped me collect if clients became difficult. Back then, we didn’t use contracts or even proposals. Everything just happened organically and we learned as we went.

By 2015 we had already worked with Starbucks, Jack Daniels, Wendy’s, and were known by most small business owners around town as the go-to-team for sign painting, lettering, murals, illustrations, and graphic design. Ben left nursing the following year, and we continued to grow and explore the possibility of building a team. We hired our first employee in 2018, and slowly built our team which has fluctuated in size and capacity as needed. Ben has usually managed the business end of our business and I the creative one, although we both provide input and insight into all areas of our business.

By 2020, especially during and after the shut downs, our work shifted almost entirely to murals and illustration – especially exterior murals. We slowly dropped some services such as chalkboards and graphic design, to focus on what we do best and enjoy the most! Our murals are bight and positive, they are shared widely across social media without being perceived as “instagram murals”, and have become beloved and iconic landmarks. We worked on the first ever public murals in the cities of Coral Gables and Dania Beach, and have worked on life-changing projects such as a multi-block mural contract with a major developer, painting a mural for Spotify, lettering in a Lexus commercial, and spending a month in Vegas painting murals for Resorts World as it was being constructed. Starbucks is still our client today, we’ve worked on more stores in the US (primarily the southeast) than I can count! Our team had grown to over 10 people, ranging in position from administrative positions, to designers and painters.

This year, I was honored as the Businesswoman of the Year in the chamber of commerce of my hometown of Coral Gables, and was selected to design an illustrated wrap for a Miami Dade Transit city bus which will be driving around town for a year. We have scaled down our team, as our projects have gotten bigger we have begun to take on less work, giving more of our time and attention to each project, and finding ways to remain innovative and passionate about what we do. We are currently working on some really cool secret projects and can’t wait to share!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

One thing we unknowingly did right early into our social media journey (aside from starting early into the existence of social media itself!) was jump in front of the camera right away, from day 1. Ben and I were so excited to be painting for a living, that we couldn’t help but take photos of each other and make time lapses of our work – people would see us lettering chalkboards in our living room with our pets, celebrated with us as we drove to Orlando to paint our first Starbucks, laughed with us when we dropped a quart of yellow paint on the Las Vegas strip, mourned the death of my artist father with me, and so much more. There are followers – many now friends – who have seen our company grow from day 1 and feel a connection with us – and us with them! These same people are the first to drop our names whenever anyone they know is opening a business which, believe it or not, is huge.

This level of comfort and success posting videos way before TikTok or Reels were a thing also helped us to transition smoothly into these new methods of content-creation that many established artists have not been able to grow with. My biggest advice would be to jump in front of the camera once in a while, let people hear your voice and help them understand what drives you and makes you different. Nowadays, there are millions of creatives providing relatively similar services, making it hard to stand out – this means your biggest asset when it comes to getting noticed isn’t your product or service, it’s you!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

In order to support artists and creatives, society needs to change their views around creatives and creative careers almost entirely! I find that people have a pretty narrow idea of what creative work even is, limiting it to fine artists and builders of incredible themed cakes, and fail to realize that almost every single object they own and every single thing they look at or listen to was designed, constructed, and marketed by creatives.

For this reason, parents and educators discourage or even fully prevent children from pursuing a creative career – leading to resentful adults that stop me while painting to tell me about how much they used to love to draw before their parents forced them into whatever in hopes of a stable paycheck, robbing the world of whatever gifts they would have created and them of the satisfaction of pursuing their passion and succeeding at it.

Contact Info:

• Website: chalkandbrush.com
• Instagram: @chalkandbrush
• Facebook: Facebook.com/chalkandbrushdesign
• Other: TikTok: @chalkandcynno

Image Credits
Headshot and Floor mural photos by CDX Creative