Anna Núñez | Artist + Designer
Anna’s career as an artist and designer is currently more multifaceted than ever, from her business, Chez Núñez—which offers digital products, education + inspiration for fellow designers and creatives—to her personal fine art projects, and renovating a 100-year-old investment property with her husband, Jesús. A St. Petersburg, FL native, Anna’s eye for creativity, ambition to grow + excel in her endeavors, and passion for uplifting, empowering, and inspiring creative people truly sets her work, product and brands apart—and we can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
The Basics:
Hometown: St. Petersburg, FL
Current city: St. Petersburg, FL
Alma mater: Florida Gulf Coast University
Degree: B.A., Studio Art
Very first job: Retail
Hustle: Artist + Designer
The Interests:
Babe you admire and why?
My mother, as cliche as it may sound. She’s one of the most kind, generous, hard-working, and sincere people that I know. She’s played a huge part in encouraging and empowering my creativity from a very early age onward. Throughout my life and work, she’s been a constant source of support. She’s also a talented clothing designer and seamstress (Ma Ma Osa) which I find incredibly cool. It’s really sweet that a lot of my wardrobe consists of thoughtful pieces that she’s designed and made by hand. I admire my mom’s dedication to her family and her creativity. She’s the best.
Go-to coffee order?
An iced latte at a local coffee shop
What’s one piece of advice that you’ve been given, that you now give to others?
My husband and I have a really wise older friend in our lives—someone who truly made it in his lifetime as a professional musician—and one day at a coffee shop, he said to my husband, “All the people who fail [at achieving their big dreams in life], are the people who gave up one day too soon”. The take away: you never know when you’re going to get a break, so you just have to be committed to not giving up. Eventually, you’ll succeed. I kind of hijack that advice as if it was given to me and not my husband, but still, I love passing the story along to others.
The Hustle:
Tell us about your hustle.
My hustle has always been multifaceted, but now more than ever, as I’ve found myself in a pretty transitional season of life and work. The work I do daily tends to bounce between our business (Chez Núñez), my work as an artist, and home renovation projects. I’ve been working with my husband to restore a one-hundred-year-old investment property for the last year.
When I started Chez Núñez six or so years ago, I was solely doing freelance branding work for small businesses. My roles involved client communication, designing branding assets, project managing, scheduling, and all that went into marketing my work through my site and social. A couple of years ago, my husband joined Chez Núñez as my business partner, and the two of us have since expanded the brand to encompass more digital products that offer support and inspiration for designers and creatives. Right now our shop contains Lightroom presets, hand-lettered fonts, and design education. We’ve loved creating these tools and courses so much that we’ve actually been transitioning away from custom branding projects in the last year, to focus even more of our energy on the shop.
Since Jesús is the incredibly organized, forward thinking, ad-running, tech-savvy half of our team, my roles with Chez Núñez now involve more product creation, content creation (for our courses), design work, photography, marketing, emails and so on. Part of the reason why we recently made an intentional shift away from one-on-one work with freelance design clients, was to also allow more space in my days for fine art. I studied visual art in school and have enjoyed creating artwork for my entire life. Putting my fine art out into the world is something that I’ve kind of left on the back burner as I’ve grown Chez Núñez, and although I don’t regret letting it simmer off to the side for a while, I’ve been really eager to stretch that side of my creativity again and begin offering up my art to anyone who might like to make it a part of their space. I’ll hopefully be launching my site and first collection for sale this August at www.annanunez.com.
Finally, I have a fairly new hustle as a home renovator and interior designer. This hasn’t always been my usual job, but our fixer upper, @casasdenunez, has consumed many hours of my daily routine since we purchased it in August 2020. We’ve DIY’d this project mostly ourselves (with the help of some skilled family and friends), and through the process, have learned SO many skills involved with construction and renovation. I’ve been tiling, painting, drywall-ing, interior designing, etc., and it feels pretty badass. Although we’re in the home-stretch of this property now, restoring distressed investment properties and owning some sweet vacation rentals is a dream that we hope to continue pursuing in the future.
For those who don’t know, what’s the Chez Núñez story? What inspired you to create the brand + biz?
I started Chez Núñez as a college student when I realized that I could apply my love for drawing to the process of creating logo designs and branding assets for small businesses. I’ve always been particularly motivated to work for myself, and to figure out how to do so in a way that utilizes my creativity. Once I realized that I could apply my fine art background to graphic design—creating branding work with an illustrative and hand-made approach—I was hooked.
In the last few years, my husband joined the CN team as my business partner, and the two of us have since expanded the brand to offer a range of digital goods and education that propels the creative work of our community. The idea of educating and encouraging others to pursue and create what they feel drawn to really motivates us.
What’s your advice for fellow babes thinking of taking the freelance route (ie: tips on organization, pricing, expanding your audience, etc)?
Deeply assess whether or not that option is truly the best fit for you. What’s your core motivation? What’s your vision? I love working for myself, but it’s not always a great fit for everyone.
Share your work and your desire for more work often. Share online, begin a portfolio, tell your friends and family. Don’t wait for perfection, just share what you’re making and what you want to make right now.
Treat every client that you get like gold. If your first clients love working with you, they’ll likely refer you to their friends, and that helps grow your business and reputation.
As you work with your clients, maintain some kind of structured process. Set clear boundaries before the project even begins, and over-communicate with them along the way. Be a constructive, invested collaborator.
When the project is finished, only add it to your portfolio and share it on social media if you’re truly proud of the work and wouldn’t mind taking on another project that feels and looks similar. You’ll attract whatever you put out into the world, so there’s no need to feel like you have to share everything.
Last year, Jesús and I created a course, the Chez Núñez Branding Process Course, that outlines our step-by-step creative process for taking a client from an idea to a finished set of branding assets. Since it shares such an in-depth look at the framework we’ve used to conduct all of our design projects, I think anyone looking to dive deeper into freelance work for branding clients might find it interesting.
How have your past professional and academic experiences and lessons prepared you for the work you do today? How have they not prepared you?
I’m thankful that my college education was a really fertile period in my life for discovery and creative exploration. It also nurtured my ability to manage my time well and establish meaningful relationships with people—like my professors and peers—as an adult. On the flip side, I think that college—specifically art programs at the time—are wonderful at teaching techniques and how to create art, but not always the best at teaching exactly what it takes to run a business. Thankfully, I’ve had some incredible mentors in my life, as well as books and the internet, to help me fill in the gaps of what school didn’t teach and figure out how to establish and run a business as I’ve gone alone. Everything is truly figure-out-able. And I’m still thankful for the wise conversations and lessons that my academic experiences offered me. I quote my professors to this day (they were truly the best).
How has being a woman impacted your professional experiences? What can we collectively do to support and empower women in your industry today?
Thankfully, I feel blessed to have grown up in an environment where being a woman wasn’t something that really affected the way I dreamed about my future and set professional goals. I’ve also always worked remotely (alone or with my husband), so being a woman hasn’t impacted my professional experience too much in that regard.
I’ve learned about the historic struggle women have faced in my industries—struggles to be respected and acknowledged for their contributions to the art and design world—but I love the idea of using this awareness as fuel to change that course of history for women. And I think it’s changed so much even just in my lifetime. I’m a beneficiary of the hard work of creative women who have paved the way for me to pursue art without my gender being a hindrance, and I’m very grateful for that.
From my perspective, women are crushing it in the art and design world today. The majority of those I admire in my industry are all women, and the majority of our Chez Núñez community of designers are women.
Collectively, I think that we can continue actively lifting one another up. Through the relationships that we make, the words we speak, the insight we share, and the ways that we invest our money, it’s important to empower and encourage one another whenever we have the chance, to keep striving towards the life we want to create for ourselves.
Who are some women in your field that you look to for inspiration?
Heather Day—I’m really inspired by her work, the progression of her career, her creative process. Amy + Jennifer Hood of Hoodzpah Design—Their design work is insanely good, they offer so much insight and inspiration to their audience, and I love their way of infusing joy and humor into their brand. Emily Jeffords—Emily’s someone that I really admire for the ways that she runs her business and shares her wisdom on being a professional artist generously with her community.
Career and/or life advice for other babes?
Don’t give something five minutes unless you’re willing to give it five years. I read that as a quote in a Darling Magazine article about seven years ago, and I carry the mantra close to my heart whenever I’m setting goals for the future. Things take time, and our deepest dreams deserve our full commitment. It’s important to keep going—to keep pursuing the life you want—even if progress feels slow or our circumstances are tough. Also, life is really short. Don’t waste any time worrying about what others might think. Just go for it. I haven’t fully learned this yet, but I’m trying to take this advice to heart a little more each day. It can be difficult, but we have to stay focused and drown out the outside noise that might try to hold us back from our dreams.
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