It’s 2021 and I’m celebrating twenty years of being self-employed at Stone Soup Creative. What does it mean to be a solopreneur and creative professional for this long? I’m old, and I’ve been at this for a while. But I’m also wiser than when I began. Here’s 20* lessons I’ve learned about running a business,…
The event has ended and it was a success. Participants are fired up with new knowledge. A graphic recorder captured the event (either virtual or in-person) and people loved seeing their ideas and discussion points come to life, or they were inspired by the speaker’s innovative story-telling. They feel connected to the message and want…
As the decade draws to a close, I was inspired to create a personal visual annual report on the past year. In putting this report together (which I drew on an iPad Pro) I learned that self-tracking “the quantified self” is a movement that started even before this past decade. I guess I was never…
Julia was great at keeping the conversation focused and not swaying opinions and worked great with both our internal team and our clients. She was organized and professional – not to mention, clients really enjoyed the workshopping process. I was hired by an award-winning creative graphic design agency in New Jersey this past year. Two…
How to use the four principles of graphic design to create images that engage audiences and make your organization look good As a 20+-year professional veteran of the graphic design field – most often working with nonprofits – I believe an organization’s marketing materials need no, require good design. In my experience good graphic design has…
Can you answer ‘yes’ to any of the following problem statements about your logo? My logo has too many colors and it’s difficult to see or make it look good on different backgrounds My logo has a complicated colorful gradient which is too expensive to reproduce My logo looks blurry when I try to print…
I’ve spent most of my professional life involved in visual communications, but that’s not what I studied as an undergrad (environmental education, at Hampshire College) because I didn’t even know what graphic design was then, and I was terribly intimidated by the “art students”. By my late twenties I had taken a single life-transforming class…
![[Interview] Julia Reich On Identifying Ideal Donor Personas & Why They Matter](https://www.stonesoupcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/113016-fundraising-supporter-personas-interview.jpg)
The following is a transcription of an interview I did with Noah Barnett of Causevox. In this episode we talked about how a nonprofit can identify and craft their ideal supporter personas and how these profiles then influence your fundraising messages. Here‘s the recording if you’d prefer to listen to the interview. Noah: Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning…
A few days ago I was scheduled to deliver a marketing workshop to a bunch of educators at a state conference, and I just didn’t know how. I mean, I give workshops all the time. But this was one was more difficult than usual. The day before the workshop, Trump was elected U.S. President, and…
A few years ago, a small performing arts organization in California was having an identity crisis. They were asking themselves the question: Who are we – really?! Background Pacific Crest Youth Arts Organization was founded in 1993. Back then they didn’t want to be known only as a drum and bugle corps, an organization that…
