Everything has a beginning and for me, ‘Talk to Lee Anne’ was the start of my career working with my clients. In the summer of 2014, I was a designer that was “wet behind the ears.” I, personally, didn’t have a solid brand or design workflow. Additionally, I was a set of various communication and design skills and a handful of completed school projects under my belt. My first client collaboration was a trial by fire. However, it could have been worse. Lee Anne Hale, my client, was the perfect person to help me start my design career. Coincidentally, her business was all about life coaching (So, the ideal collaboration).

Lee Anne wanted a brand that represented her unconventional methods as a life coach. She also wanted designs that older adults could accept without hesitation. So, how do you balance a brand between professional and not-so-professional? The process felt like Goldilocks and the Tree Bears. One design was too professional. The following design was too unconventional. Back and forth. Back and forth. But then there came a day when I nailed the look she wanted. Presenting two different fonts and three different colors for the logo, Talk to Lee Anne popped out of the sketchbook and into the real world. I began designing new business cards and laying a foundation for Lee Anne’s website. Unfortunately, our collaboration was halted by the awesome arrival of Lee Anne’s first baby.

In 2015, after a year of design work and establishing Kalimizzou., I returned to “Talk to Lee Anne” to finish the job I started. The last thing I did was create a seamless one-page website (www.talktola.com) that balanced between professional and unconventional. The site works extremely well for her brand and is unlike any life coach website I researched. In the end, I’m extremely proud of our collaboration and I’m grateful to begin my design career with a business that helps people as well.