Our philosophy is simple...If it works, if it makes the client happy, if we are happy, it is successful, and we can finally sleep for an hour.

We are a visual media company that specializes in art direction
and visual communication.

What does this mean?

Well, everything from hiring and directing photographers for a project to designing and/or photo-illustrating, plus, whatever lies in between...lets just stick to visual communication.

Being partners in business and in life has given us strength in our work and has brought out a different side of both of us. We have opened each others eyes to new ideas and avenues that we, as separate entities, would not have traveled down alone.

Everything around us inspires us to create, whether it be design or photography, illustration or making rugs and lampshades! We see photos in our minds as we are walking down the street, we collect bits of paper, mailing labels, old letters, labels from Chinese food wrappers, discarded color bars from earlier job match proofs. We take photos for no apparent reason other than to store them as elements for future use. We see graphic design in buildings, roads, music, sleep, the way a glass sits on a table in proportion to a pair of sunglasses. The most common objects can inspire us to try to capture some piece of what drew our attention to it in the first place. If certain elements catch our eye, maybe something about it will capture other peoples attention as well. All of this goes into creating a visual identity that sells the piece to a client

Part of who we are as a company and as people is our travels.
We have travelled extensively gathering visual information as well as cultural experiences along the way. From The Alhambra and La Mezquita in Spain to buildings in Ireland, Italy and Madrid. Billboards from Greece to London, we bring these disparate elements to our work to make it whole.

We look at Bauhaus and Swiss design ethics as well as Victorian, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures among others, this friction between style and culture gives slow Hearth studio a look that is unique. Each piece we do draws from these and other ideas to bring us to the final product.

We start a project by fusing these random disjointed objects or ideas together to give a unique approach to solving the problem. Lets say we have to create a piece about communication, let's see...we just got a letter from a magazine in Japan, and, I have a deed to a farmstead in Manhattan in the late 1800's, hey! these two things can be the starting blocks to a photo-illustration about communication!

Different cultures, languages and in some cases (i.e. the computer) new languages are making the world a smaller place. slow Hearth's design has to entice, excite and evolve while still keeping a foot in cultural tradition and history thus bringing our own personal experiences to the work. As a creative community, we need to educate each other while telling a story about ourselves in the process.

In order for our work to fit the needs of the client, open dialogue is necessary between the client and ourselves as well as between each other. We have found that to be good visual communicators, we must also be good salesmen and diplomats.

With the way technology is dominating culture, we need to do all we can to keep up and keep people interested. There is so much visual stimuli out there, we need to do all we can to make people stop and look.