LWD Spotlight: Modern Bird Studios

Yay! It's finally here. The debut of my new Q&A column; LWD Spotlight. As I mentioned yesterday the column will feature insights from real-life creatives. Here I get to pick their brains for fabulous information on anything from ideation, conception, the design process; to life as a biz owner and building a brand from the ground up. My hope? For it to be a resource for other creative minds to get info, support and inspiration. So...let's get to it!

First up is Modern Bird Studios. I originally became aware of this fab design studio through Twitter which lead me to their site and most importantly their work. I must say it was click-through love at first site and I knew right then that they would an excellent LWD Spotlight (and my first at that).

Gregg Deal, along with his wife Megan started Modern Bird Studios to create something new, original and cool, and that they did. Using graphic design, photography and hand painting Gregg creates one-of-a-kind customized wall art. Can it get more intricate and personal than that? These have "best gift ever" written all over them! From Gregg's first email, he instantly appeared to me as an approachable, witty and enthusiastic creative. The same goes for his wife Megan who manages their marketing and is the humor behind Modern Bird's hilarious tweets (@modern_bird). Here is a little insight on this dynamic duo and their Modern Bird...

1. You work closely with your wife Megan at Modern Bird, how do the two of you manage your work life with your personal life? What is a personal life? Excellent question. The short answer is 'Barely'. We have two kids, a 3-year-old and an 11-month-old. The 3-year-old is a girl in the midst of her terrible 3's/jealousy over the younger one and the 11-month-old is a boy who simply eats everything from whatever he finds on the floor to small children. Among this is the time I take to find freelance work as a Graphic Designer. We started Modern Bird to simply stop struggling by using our abilities. Where I am a graphic designer by trade, my wife is a marketing genius (and was a professional marketing genius before kids). As she says, 'she's the brains, I'm the beauty, only she's prettier than I am...in a more traditional way.' So managing the work of Modern Bird isn't so much managed as much as it is what it is: survival. We love it, and do it willingly and whole-heartedly, but necessity is the mother of invention and we just make it work in our personal lives because we have to. Luckily we work very well together, can laugh at things, have respect for each other's opinions, and are best friends.

2. More and more small businesses are turning to social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs to market and promote themselves. Which one have you had the most success with? How do you use that form of media to promote Modern Bird? Social media is the marketing vehicle we use. I run a blog based on cycling and include a podcast with it, and with those efforts, Megan and I began to realize that with a little work, we can use these tools in marketing efforts with Modern Bird that cost us nothing but time (and a lot of time, let me tell you!). Twitter seems to be the golden goose for us since we can have real time interaction with people, and we aren't limited solely to our friends and family on FB. It's telling of our personality (or rather, my wife's personality...she's friggin' hilarious) and in building relationships. I personally find Facebook disappointing, but perhaps I am not doing it right. Originally when Megan and I did the math on Facebook we figured "hey, between the two of us we know over 1000 people, so we can spread this thing like wild fire!". No. Apparently we only have like 50 REAL friends because the amount of 'fans' we have on Facebook doesn't lick the boot of our Twitter account that is growing every day with strangers. Facebook allows us to post images of work as it's happening, and that's good, but that's as far as it goes really. We post the links from FB (links of finished pieces and to our FB page) on Twitter so people can see what's going on over at FB, and we have gained FB fans that way. We can post updates on Twitter, but it is for a fleeting moment, and then it is over so we need to repost things a few times a day. We can't talk about us all day either because it will turn people off so we have really dug in our heels to create real relationships with the people we come across. Megan manages our Twitter account and is a champ. Her connection with other women running blogs and sites is real. I'm a guy and frankly kind of sarcastic to the point of being a dick, so she is clearly the best person for that job.

A whole other paragraph is Blogs. We are completely working with and relying on blogs, particularly of the Mommy persuasion. Our demographic is modern moms and modern families, so Mommy Blogs seem to fit that well. We have some product reviews set up starting next week along with some giveaways to help get the word out quicker than we can on our own, drive people to join our FB page, follow us on Twitter, and to create a buzz about Modern Bird among the mommy blogger community. We figure if this type of marketing is what the huge, household name companies (i.e. Oscar Meyer, Dyson, Wilton, etc) are doing then there must be something special about it. We have also started developing relationships with design blogs and interior designers. We have some cool plans for later this year that will hopefully knock the socks off the design industry...stay tuned!

3. You are obviously a very creative person. What are 5 words that describe your creativity? Jeez, seriously? Damn it, that's 2 words already. OK, let me start over. After the colon: Super Modern Original Forward Thinking...jeez, that kinda fizzled out. Sorry. Edgy, sharp, forward thinking (does that count as 1 or 2 words? would a hyphen in the middle make it 1 word?) {in Gregg's defense, I had been asked a similar question by an ad agency when applying for their internship program back in the day, it was the hardest but most memorable question I have ever been asked (but a good one at that!) Sorry Greg, I couldn't resist!}
4. Modern Bird is such a great name! What's the story behind it? Great question. We don't get that question often and it's got a fantastic story! I am a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (out of Reno, NV) and both of our kids have as a part of their legal names a word from my traditional Native Language. Our oldest has a mouthful for a name which is Sage Alexandra Huittsuu Deal. Huittsuu is pronounced Hoo-weet-sue and means Little Bird. I actually call her Huittsuu, not Sage. Little bird is what I envisioned the first time I felt her kick inside Megan's stomach. So the bird segment is from our first born, the modern part is part of the style of painting. We ran through this and wanted to do something like this because we wanted something personal and meaningful to us. Megan has a blog called birdsandbears.net which is under the same pretense (Bear is my son who's name is Phoenix Weta-bidenge'ni Deal. The middle name means Bear Warrior, but Weta is Bear. Jeez, long name, long story.). I should write a book.

A *big* thank you to Gregg and Megan at Modern Bird for your candid insights and being the first fearless LWD Spotlight contributor. Keep us posted on all the new work ahead of you!!

Want to be featured in LWD Spotlight? I am looking for creative minds who are willing to share a little bit about their work and design process (nothing too telling--i promise). To inquire and learn more email: marybeth@liveworkdesignblog.com. I look forward to hearing from you!