As a freelancer, your business is constantly evolving. About six months ago, I decided to focus my time – even if it were just my ‘free time’ – on branching out. Since there’s nothing I love working on more than lettering, I decided to try and get this part of my freelance business off the ground. I had been dabbling in the lettering business for a while, but now it should begin to get serious.

life is what happens when you’re making plans
I’m sure you know the way life goes: you decide to focus all your time and energy on one thing, and then something else comes along that makes it all the more difficult to overcome your weaker self. So it was with me: just around the time I decided to get serious about my lettering, I moved. But I didn’t just move into a new apartment, like most people might. No, I renovated an old apartment and then moved in. New floors, tearing wallpaper off the walls and repainting them, new plumbing and new bathroom… the whole nine yards – the whole process took around five months to complete. As you can imagine, not a lot happened in that time that pushed my hand-lettering business further along.
So then I moved, and thought I’d had a great opportunity to work from home, since I had all this new space I didn’t quite know what to do with. I ended up converting a third of my huge closet into an office space.

As it turns out, though, this office space was great for everything I work on – except for the creative stuff. I had no problem correcting manuscripts, preparing lessons, or doing my bookkeeping. Even writing blog posts was no problem. But I simply did not want to sit down in this space and draw.

hobby or business?
After the realization set in that this office might not be the best solution for me after all, I mulled over what to do. I thought about it for a while and decided there were two things I could do: I could accept this situation and leave my lettering as what it was (a free-time, do-it-when-inspiration-strikes-you thing) – or I could do what I’d set out to do: get serious about it. I had to admit defeat: it was time to expand – literally. I needed more space.

expand to breathe
So I looked around for about a month and checked out various co-working and other office solutions. Nothing seemed to feel right. As fate would have it, though, an office space freed up this month in one of the most inspiring offices I had previously been to. The office is located in an old art-nouveau house with high ceilings, creaky wooden floors – and some of the coolest creative people I know in Innsbruck (florianmatthias). Now, I share an office with creative colleagues and I have my own “creative desk” that I only use for my lettering – it’s almost like a lettering studio in an office!

It’s not fully furnished yet (somehow I really can’t bring myself to decorate a room again), but it’s already evident that my brain and my creativity have room to breathe and expand here. So… stay tuned for many exciting things to come from my hand-lettering business, letterissima!