Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Melissa Balkon. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Melissa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I’d always been really creative as a kid—I love art class. However, the moment I knew I wanted to pursue my creativity professionally was in high school during CAD class. While I really wasn’t that good at CAD, we spent one week on “commercial arts” (what design used to be called) and I spent way more time than was required of me toying around with different designs and layouts—I was absolutely hooked!

Melissa, 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 am a formally-trained graphic designer and have been working in a variety of areas within that field for the last 20 years. After spending my first 10 years working for other companies and firms (while freelancing during evenings and weekends), I finally decided to make the jump to running my design studio—Strong Design Studios—full time. At Strong Design, we work with bold brands to develop their brand strategy, and then help them apply that strategy across their website and brand collateral so that they can elevate their brand communication and grow their businesses.

Then, about five years ago, I started tinkering with making art prints and cards. After toying around with this for a couple of years, I officially launched my product brand—Phoenix Supply Co. At Phoenix Supply Co. we create colorful art and gifts that celebrate the southwest and that enable our fellow desert-dwellers to express their love of the desert. Not only do I love designing these products, but it has also been really fun to become my own client!

I currently run Strong Design full time and operate Phoenix Supply Co. during evenings and weekends.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I think something that can be tough to understand for someone whose career is not in a creative field is that creative work is not something that you can really turn off; the line between work and life for a creative person is a blur. This is because being a creative tends to bleed into every element of your life—it is less of something you do from 9 to 5, and more of who you are at the core (I’ve jokingly described design as “a lifestyle” in the past). Because of this, it can be really tough to find balance between work and life, because lots of time “life” can look very similar to “work” for a person with a creative career.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I’m sure I probably won’t be the first person to say this, but COVID definitely forced me to have to pivot with Phoenix Supply Co. When COVID hit, I had just placed the largest print orders of my life because I had a full season of markets booked—and then everything was canceled. My print order literally arrived on my doorstep 3 days after all my markets were canceled for the season. So here I had a whole season’s worth of products without access to the venue I’d planned to sell them in. After being super-bummed for several days, I decided I’d have to get on Instagram stories in order to connect in a face-to-face way with my customers, similar to how I would at a market. And you know what—it worked! I have met so many new customers via Instagram stories and it is so fun to finally meet them in person now that markets have resumed! I also embraced several new selling methods during this time—consignment, story sales, group marketplaces—and a few surprised me with how successful they were! I think when life throws you lemons like COVID, we have the opportunity to choose to dig in our heels and forge a new path.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.phoenixsupply.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phoenixsupplyco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phxsupplyco
• Other: https://www.strongdesign.co/ https://www.instagram.com/strongdesignstudios/

Image Credits
Kharisma Studios Life Created