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

Kate, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

It may be cliche, but my hero is my father. He owns a merger and acquisition consultancy firm for aviation services and has a contagious passion for aviation. He began flying with his dad at a young age and took his first solo flight on his sixteenth birthday. He has flown charter and experimental airplanes and tells stories of landing airplanes in weather most pilots won’t brave and even landed a plane without a landing gear. He ultimately decided to get his MBA and build a career on the business side of aviation.

My whole life, dinner conversations centered around business and airplanes. This gave me a business mindset from an early age and instead of playing with Barbies, I would create businesses ranging from an insect research business to a jewelry business.

Watching my dad run a business he is passionate about and teaching me about business inspired me to find a career path that I was just as passionate about and never settle for something that feels soul-sucking just for the money. Although my passion ended up being design and not aviation, my dad supported me in building a career in design and has been my business mentor through setting up my own freelance design business. Many visual designers aren’t naturally business-focused, but having my dad as a role model and mentor has given me the skills to think about design from a business point of view and how it brings value to a business instead of focusing only on the aesthetics and communication aspects.

Kate, 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?

My path to design has been anything but linear. In college, I double majored in sociology and anthropology and minored in creative writing. I had no idea what I wanted to do but I thought I would have it figured out by the time I graduated. Unfortunately, when I graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2018 I was more lost than ever. I got a job waiting tables and was miserable.

When I was at my lowest point, I decided I wanted to pursue a creative career. I began taking photographs and writing for online music publications and was paid in concert tickets. Working in WordPress for these publications inspired me to go to community college for a web design certificate, which was part of a graphic design program. In my first semester of the certificate program, I took an Adobe Illustrator course that opened my eyes to what graphic design is and fell in love with it. Within a month, I switched to the graphic design associates program and quickly began taking on freelance work and a part-time graphic design job. I explored different areas of graphic design, but ultimately landed on brand design as the area I wanted to focus on. In my time outside of school and work, I immersed myself in brand strategy to learn how to create brand identities that not only look good but also help businesses achieve their goals.

After finishing my associate degree, I created Kate Chambers Creative LLC to help businesses figure out who they are, what their goals are, who their audience is, how they position themselves in the marketplace, and then bring their brand to life visually. My goal is to give my clients more than just a beautiful brand identity. I want to collaborate with leadership teams to give them a guiding light for future business decisions, empathize with their customers, and design a brand that communicates who they are to the world.

While brand design is my main focus, I also do other graphic design work for clients. Some examples are I work with magazines to layout their publications, work with nonprofits to design their annual reports, and partner with marketing agencies to design marketing materials for their clients.

I also enjoy designing surface patterns in my free time which I sell on products on Society6. Having a bit of passive income selling on print-on-demand platforms is a good way for creatives to create an extra income source without always creating new work.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Books have been a huge resource for me in developing my mindset in my career and expand my thinking. Here are some big ones…

Playing to Win by A.G. Lafely to understand business strategy
The Brand Gap, The Brand Flip, and Zag by Marty Neumeier to understand branding
Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley to understand design thinking and creativity in business
The Hero and the Outlaw by Margaret Mark to understand brand archetypes

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

All of my clients have been gained through word of mouth and networking. If you show you are passionate about what you do and go above and beyond to exceed expectations, people won’t hesitate to recommend you to others who are looking for the work you have to offer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://katechamberscreative.com
• Instagram: @katechamberscreative
• Facebook: @katechamberscreative
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katechambers2
• Other: Society6: https://society6.com/kaleidoscopickate