How I got started in invitations

_Me, wearing a shirt I designed and screenprinted. NGL, I still think this is a cool design. _

It all started back in college when I was majoring in art and design. I had chosen this major because I felt like it would afford me the most options in what I wanted to do, but now that I was actually in it, I felt like the major wasn’t providing me with a clear path forward. A lot of my friends were in graphic design, and I was really interested in the things they were doing - I started sitting in on their classes, and doing their projects on my own time. I pretty quickly decided that I want to switch majors, and started my sophomore year as a graphic design student.

I really loved my time as a design student, and I thought when I got out of school I would move away, work at a boutique design firm, and be incredibly successful by the time I was 25, at which point I would have a meet-cute with some hunky guy and get married when I was 30. To me, that felt like the clearest path to success and fulfillment.

What actually happened was a little different 

I started working at internships for design in college - I needed them to be paid, which meant that my options were pretty limited.  Boutique design agencies were totally off the table, as they pretty much only offered unpaid internships. I still feel strongly that if you can’t afford to compensate someone for their time, you probably shouldn’t have an intern, but unfortunately, that’s not the norm in the creative industry. While I was in school, I worked for a distance education group that was affiliated with my university, a teacher’s group, and my school’s sustainability office. 

_A sustainability walking map I designed for my internship - these projects definitely helped me realize my love of print, and looking back it’s kind of nuts I got to own so many cool projects as an intern! _

Particularly at my last internship, I learned a LOT about working with clients, as I was the only designer in the office - it was extremely valuable to learn how to deal with people who weren’t approaching creative problems from at all the same place as I was. 

_I also got to create several annual reports, which involved some sweet graphs. _

I would love to go back and sit in on some of the meetings I was a part of at that time… I was obviously very new to professional situations, and I’d be in meetings with 10-15 people, most of whom were middle-aged men, trying to lead them through a design process I myself was just figuring out. I’m sure I was not nearly as smooth as I thought I was, but I definitely learned a lot!

_Making some truly puzzling photographic choices during this time. This suite was thermography, which felt v fancy for someone who had never done anything beyond a laser printer. _

During this time, I designed my first invitation suite for my cousin, Alyssa! Her support in such a tangible way means so much to me… I had no idea what I was doing, didn’t know anything about the wedding planning process, and thought the whole thing was easy - I was probably kind of obnoxious to work with, haha! But I loved seeing what I had made come to life, and it was my first taste of how awesome print design can be. I was sooo proud of these and so excited for her to send them out!

The hilarious part of all of this is that at the time, I distinctly remember my fellow students and I talking about wedding stationery and working for yourself like it was the lowest form of design possible… like these were last resort options for an actual career. Little hipster Alison had a pretty big dose of humility coming her way!

_You know what wasn’t depressing? Adopting Caspian as a graduation gift to myself. _

Graduating from college was a depressing event in my life. First, I looooved college. I loved the fresh starts of a new semester, I love learning, and projects, and the library, and living in what felt like a little big city where you could walk everywhere - I was so sad to leave it all behind. Second, I graduated at maybe the worst time to have a nonessential job. Out of the 40ish people in my graduating class, one person had a job lined up after college. One. Those boutique design firms I was so sure I was gonna work for were straight up bare bones, like they weren’t even taking unpaid interns because they didn’t have enough work.  Lucky for me, I got to keep my internship at the sustainability office for another year after college, but I really kind of hated my life at that time… I was applying for a million jobs, not hearing back from anyone, I didn’t get to be a student anymore, and things were not going how I thought they should. I applied for so many jobs at that time, like literally anything: Victoria’s Secret (didn’t have enough experience), Starbucks (never heard back), a Segway tour guide (no explanation but not getting that job was definitely a low point). I worked random jobs as a babysitter/personal assistant, and cleaned my mom’s house for extra cash, I even took a disastrous unpaid internship for a few weeks (they told me they were going to be hiring a junior designer soon, so I thought that would be my way in, except my first day was also their new junior designer’s first day… and they had little dogs that pooped and peed inside, and whoever saw it first had to clean it up. They also had no work for me to do, it’s like the only thing in my life that I haven’t felt bad about quitting). I sent out hundreds of unanswered cold emails and started trying to freelance.

_A website design I did way back in the day. _

I cast a pretty wide net at first for freelancing - I did websites, branding, random design projects, I started a greeting card shop on Etsy, and you guessed it, I even did an occasional wedding invitation. 

_Branding for crackers - I was so proud of this project. _

At this point, it was mostly friends and family who were getting married, but I had a lot of fun with those projects and started thinking that maybe wedding invitations would be easy money (lol again at little Alison). After a while of doing this, my internship ended, and I started trying to make it work full time. I began to refine my offerings, and my now husband and I started focusing on creating websites for small businesses, and I also did wedding stationery.

_A table number I created for a styled shoot before I was really even a stationer. I thought I was so slick with the foil paper. _

The wedding stationery work was fairly sporadic. I was focusing more on the website design, and that was growing slowly. The only problem was that I really did not enjoy it. Website design started to feel repetitive, I didn’t like working with small business owners, and I particularly did not enjoy the fact that website projects can literally drag on forever. Every time I thought I had completed a project, one more small to do would pop up, and so on and so on. Around my 24th birthday, I had a small crisis, one where I was like WHAT am I doing with my life?! I could not see a way forward with website design, and to be honest, it was suuuch a grind, I felt like I was hardly making any money, and I didn’t even really like doing it.

I remember being on a long walk with David, and just talking out all of my options. I decided I wanted to do something event-based, and extremely briefly thought about being a wedding planner, and then immediately realized that I would not be good at that at all. This brought me back to wedding stationery. It’s something I had some experience with at this point but hadn’t really committed to it, and it felt like a really good fit - I love weddings, I liked that the project had an end date, and I love print work. Wedding stationery also meant that I could play with unique printing methods that commercial print work often didn’t have the budget for, and I felt like I already had my foot in the door a little bit.

It was around this time that I also decided to ask my friend Gabie if she wanted to be my business partner. She was living in California at the time, and we had bonded over our shared love of stationery, and doing crafts for her wedding, so it felt like it could be a natural fit.

After Gabie and I decided to start working together, I also had a job fall into my lap. I started working at Videri Chocolate Factory as a bar wrapper, which was really perfect for me at the time since we were just getting One + Only Paper started. So there was a lot going on.

Our first styled shoot! Photo by Becci Ames. 

Gabie and I started out by creating a ton of sample invitations and staging a styled shoot at the Merrimon-Wynne House. This is also when I started getting into watercolor. It was a crazy time. Gabie was in the process of moving back to North Carolina, I was finishing up some last website clients, we were both working other jobs, and trying to get this dream going. I remember launching the One + Only Paper instagram account, and feeling so excited and discouraged at the same time… we had like 20 followers, all of whom we knew, and it was just like, will anyone ever hire us?

_Our very first instagram post. S/O to the ten people who liked this post. _

Slowly we started to gain some traction, with small jobs at first, and then bigger invitation clients. More importantly, we got the business side of things set up (I say ‘we’, but honestly that was all Gabie), and slowly started to figure out a process, and how we wanted to work.

The weirdest part about all of this is that this is when I started to feel comfortable being a business owner. Back when I was freelancing, I was so adamant that I was a freelancer and not a business owner, I guess because it felt too scary? It’s crazy, because now I love a lot of the challenges that come along with being a business owner, but I felt so afraid to own that title for so long. I guess I had to grow into it.

Things were getting busier at One + Only Paper, and around this time is when Gabie and I decided to part ways. At least from my perspective, it was a positive step forward for both of us. Starting a business is stressful and intense, and a process that lasts for years, and we decided that it would be better for both of us if that wasn’t a marathon we ran together. We’re still friends, and I owe Gabie a lot - I know that One + Only Paper would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for her huge part in building the foundation of this company, and I will always be grateful for that.

After our split, I pretty much put my head down and started working hard to achieve my goals. I learned so much that following year. It was the first time I had to manage multiple client timelines, and I learned a lot about setting expectations, building relationships with my printers, and how to manage my time. The year after that felt like one step forward and two steps back - I was busy with clients all year, but I was also SUPER busy with clients all year. I barely had a minute to breathe, much less figure out how to improve my processes or do anything else to drive my business forward.

And that brings me to today! In some ways, 2019 feels like a fresh start for me - at the end of last year I had some time to reflect on what I learned in 2018 and put a few things I’d been thinking about for a long time in motion, and I’m super excited to see what the future holds. I’ve learned so much in the past couple of years, and this feels to me like the year that I’m going to put it all together and see what I can really do.

If you have made it this far, please leave a comment so I can send you a personal thank you note for reading basically my life story - Gretchen Rubin said it best when she said the days are long but the years are short. I can’t believe I’ve been out of college for almost 9 years now - I simultaneously feel like I’ve come such a long way, and like I’ve only just begun!