We recently connected with Hannah Westerman and have shared our conversation below.

Hannah, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?

I met my first client at a concert in upstate New York while I was in college. I had just started my major in Graphic Design and I knew quickly that I was on the right path. At this concert I had a moment when it hit me how amazing it would be to create artwork for musicians – concert posters, music festival graphics, merch design. After the show I had the opportunity to speak with the producer of the show and told him I wanted to work for his company. I became their first graphic design intern and nine years later they are still my client and we have worked together on countless projects; from an apparel brand for a prominent athlete to the suite of graphics for a showcase put on at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Hannah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started Avenue West when I was 22 years old with nothing but a laptop and a drive to create beautiful work for clients I valued. Today, I run a team of six and work on a range of projects in the arts and culture space. Our main offerings include illustration, branding, packaging and print design. We work with companies large and small from individuals to nonprofits to large corporations.

We specialize in illustration and have found ways to tie illustration into all of our projects. Some of our most notable projects to date are the branding, packaging, website and launch of Jason Kelce’s apparel brand Underdog, the creation of the Eagles’ Christmas album “A Philly Special Christmas” album cover, their line of merch and the launch of the initiative, and all of the graphics for both WXPN’s XPoNential Festival and Philly Music Festival.

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

Three years ago I had a client abruptly stop a project that I was expecting to be paid thousands of dollars for, right before the end of the year when I knew no one was going to start any new projects. They ended up blaming me for causing issues in the project and specifically blaming my young age and inexperience. I felt like a lot of this came out of the blue and their reaction was so extreme I didn’t know what to attribute it to.

I later found out that they were having financial issues and I suppose cutting the project short was an easy way out of the financial commitment.

This taught me two lessons. The first was that contracts are incredibly important. They should be signed by every client and they should be very clear and approved by a lawyer. The second is that I should always listen to my gut. I knew before agreeing to this project that they had dropped two designers before signing on with me. I also knew from the start that I had a weird feeling about them and the way they talked about money. My gut told me at the beginning of this project that I shouldn’t move forward but I wanted the project and the budget and I went forward anyways.

Always trust your gut instincts!

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

The book that has made the biggest impact on my career is Bring Yourself by Mori Taheripour. It is all about value-based negotiations. The book taught me to not fear negotiation, but to welcome it. Negotiating is often depicted in tv shows and movies as cut throat and unforgiving, but Mori helped me understand that negotiating can be about understanding your counterpart, finding resolution and creating a sustainable agreement.

Contact Info:

• Website: avenuewest.design
• Instagram: @avenue_west
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-westerman-9282a2b0/

Image Credits
Underdog photo by Kevin Kilkenny