We recently connected with Stephanie Hurtado and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Stephanie, thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
I recently have rebranded from previously being ‘Grove Design Co.’ to now being named ‘Take it Easy Designs.’ Though this story behind the reasoning is really sad it now has a more greater meaning than anything else I could have ever named it. On mother’s day of 2024 (May 12, 2024) I was on a family trip with my husband and 2, about to be 3, year old son visiting my husbands biological mom, sister, step-dad, and extended family in Arizona. We had a wonderful weekends worth of visits to Sedona, Grand Canyon, etc.. On the way back that mother’s day after visiting Antelope Canyon in Page, AZ that morning and grabbing some lunch we made our drive back to Phoenix and unfortunately on the drive down our vehicle (Carrying my husband, myself, our son, my mother-in-law & my sister-in-law) was struck by a drunk driver leaving only my son and I alive.
I had taken a hiatus on designing, not having any interest whatsoever to design again until I started remembering things my husband would say in awe of when he’d watch me design and back when I was in college creating physical art. Since we had gotten together he was so invested in the hard work put into creating the beauty people tend to overlook everyday. SO in the following months of having to search for a job where my life had drastically changed I came to the conclusion that he was my biggest supporter and I wanted to honor him in any way I could.
The reasoning for naming it so was because the band Eagles was one of if not his all time favorite band. So sitting there brainstorming I realized their song Take it Easy is a perfect resemblance to our relationship and history.
The song has several themes such as taking life not too seriously, maintaining composure, even when things feel chaotic. Which I believe it to be his way of telling me it’ll be alright and to embrace life’s journey which I will be doing for him; living the life he didn’t get to finish.
My husband is the epitome of Take it Easy. So carefree, comedic, calm, and hungry for adventure.
I may still struggle with convincing myself that design is for me sometimes but I will never miss an opportunity to honor him.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I always feel embarrassed about how I came to be in the design industry.. I knew back when I was about to graduate high school back in 2015 that I wanted to pursue art in some way shape or form and when they had my class go through and sign up for courses to our colleges I had 3 pages laid out in front of me of the 3 types of bachelor degrees my college had offered at the time and I blindly said “that one” not knowing a single thing about it. But as I began my classes the following year I loved how passionate the other students and my teachers were about it and I had this gut feeling that I would be proud of sticking through it. Then before I knew it I graduated virtually (thanks to covid) in 2020 with a Bachelor’s in Art specializing in Graphic Design.
Since then I haven’t exactly had the opportunity to be in a huge Marketing/Design firm but I really enjoy the schedule I have been able to make for myself since having my son back in 2021 and becoming a stay-at-home mom and freelancing, now more so than ever since my husband passed I have no choice but to be determined.
Take it Easy Designs currently offer branding design projects specifically and will hopefully venture out more to website designs in the future.
I understand that not everybody understands why branding is so important when someone such as a family friend can simply “make a logo” for you for free but I feel that based off of where I grew up I have that background of “none of this stuff matters, it’s not important, who cares, money should be put to use on more important things…” So I am willing to take that extra time to communicate with potential clients that this stuff really does matter if you’d like for your business/services to grow into something you’ll need other employees to help you with and stand out against the competition.
If I were to be proud of anything quite honestly I would say myself. No life anybody has lived is easy, and after the past year I have had alone I feel it is appropriate to say I am proud of myself. Being proud of myself may seem a little gross but I hope any future potential clients realize that when your designer is proud of themselves they will be proud of the art they create and proud of you for trusting them which will lead to a wonderful client based relationship and a smooth process.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I’m sure there are plenty but the top one that comes to mind is designspiration.com, quite literally a major resource for any sort of creative inspiration an individual can be looking for.
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.
Though there are countless individuals that are blessed with having the natural talent to create wonderful art and not think twice about how it came to be but I believe that plenty of creatives have struggled with the fact that not everything is natural, a lot of things come with tons of practice and endless patience. I tend to feel like non-creatives overlook that part of us, like it’s all been a simple process of thinking of the idea, creating said idea, and displaying the finished product. When in reality its been months and even years of taking the time to research meanings behind art, the technique used, why does this art seem to feel like something you have to get out into the world without understanding it, the process in learning from mistakes, etc.
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