Roslyn McLarty

I signed up for the Graphic Design Course as a way to re-explore my creativity after burning out from my startup, The GIST (which is a client of ilovecreatives!). During my time as Head of Ops, Finance & Growth at The GIST, I found that I really loved being a part of the branding process and any other visual creative opportunities I had as part of that role. (And I loved working with Mindy & Sarah on the branding and design!) After I burned out and took some time away to recover, I wanted to allow myself the opportunity to explore a creative skill just for the fun of it, as a way to self express, and also so that I would have the ability to create designs for any of my future projects - both entrepreneurial and personal. It so happened I was starting to plan my wedding around the time I started the course so I used my wedding brand identity as my first branding project in the course, which was SO much fun. Since then, I've decided to launch a personal development platform that offers coaching, content and community to purpose-led founders. It's felt amazing getting to ideate and execute on a brand identity I feel expresses the values and personality of this new brand.

Creating the brand identity for my wedding really taught me to surrender to the process. I went in with a bit of an idea of how I thought the brand should look and feel and was really leaning towards one of my branding concepts. But through the process of building out several art directions, two different concepts and getting some great feedback along the way, my final brand identity ended up taking a little bit from each direction and ultimately was way better than my original vision. This taught me not to try and control a specific outcome but to really just give myself to the process, try out a bunch of things and see what comes up creatively.

I loved the opportunity to receive real, thoughtful feedback from Mindy and Sarah throughout the course. Their feedback allowed me to incrementally uplevel my designs and come away with a finished product I was really proud of. They're also the sweetest and it was so fun working with them as instructors after having collaborated with them previously as a client. <3

Definitely do it. It's such a fun and inviting community and you'll walk away with real tangible skills, resources and inspiration.

The ability to integrate a creative skill into how I build businesses going forward, because it just makes the process of building a business so much more fun (which was really important for me to consciously invite into my work as someone who burned out). There is something very special about having the ability to express a brand feeling via your design work.