April 1st, 2021 was the one year anniversary of my decision to pivot from design research consulting to career coaching. I slowly phased out my remaining projects to dedicate my business completely to my new practice, and I loooove it!
Why did I make the switch? Well, I was getting bored with research altogether, which I had been doing for 10 years. I also really despised certain research activities, like writing reports (this always has been my least favorite part). And all of the logistical and documentation overhead… no thanks!
One great thing about being self-employed is that I have the choice to do whatever work I want to do, and my goal is to maximize the work I enjoy, minimize the work I don’t enjoy, and make the most money for the least amount of effort and overhead possible. Providing coaching services for individuals puts me in a great spot with this; it’s scalable in ways that consulting isn’t.
When I was consulting, www.amysantee.com was a decent but pretty bare bones website. It’s all I needed really – at a certain point in your career, you don’t have to go on and on about what you know how to do and prove it to people publicly.
Going into coaching in 2020, I repurposed the existing site, removing anything about consulting and adding info about my coaching services, but keeping the same branding and overall design.
But I realized that I didn’t love my site or my logo, and it didn’t really express me and my business in the way I wanted it to. As I got more into coaching, and worked with my business coach, Tara Butler Floch of Broadview Coaching, I gained clarity around how to tell the story of what it’s like to work with me (i.e., my brand), and this is the much loved result.
The revamp of the site plus new branding has been in the works since December 2020, and now it’s out! I partnered on this crime with Jenny Ambrose of Pureé Fantastico. We worked together throughout the creative process, from conceptual vision and branding to content and the execution of visual design, layout, and information architecture.
Fun fact – many of the images come from the open access archives of various museums around the world. These museums allow for commercial reuse of hi res files of much of the art in their archives. Jenny is responsible for all of the custom illustrations.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new site. Feel free to leave a comment here with any feedback.
Anthropologizing 