5. Good Snake
@goodsnakeA Conversation with Kayla Fritz and Hannah Epelbaum co-owners of Good Snake. Good Snake is a creative agency specializing in creative direction and handmade signs.
Only .1% of creative agencies are women owned, how do you create space for yourself in this feild?
Hannah: I think we are lucky because we are both gay. It makes things a little bit easier because we don’t fit into normal gender roles so people already don’t know what to do with us. We tend to take on a stronger voice than a lot of women feel comfortable doing.
Kayla: We also had to define what we are and who we are when we were younger. You don’t want to go backwards and not be out about something you want to do. We never really set out to make a creative agency, it started because we were really just trying to survive. Our jobs (before) just didn’t feel good.
Hannah: We knew that we weren’t getting hired for jobs because we were women or because we were gay and we look gay.
What advice would you give young designers?
Hannah: If design is like solving a problem or completing an end goal, then it’s successful. I think everything else is subjective opinion. Like you see like how what is considered good design has like shifted throughout like the past hundred years. I think people should be more confident, especially women about what they know because none of this is really real. If you’re doing something new and different, that’s accomplishing a goal. It’s not just about what everybody else is doing because that creates homogenization and honestly really boring design.
Hannah: I think we are lucky because we are both gay. It makes things a little bit easier because we don’t fit into normal gender roles so people already don’t know what to do with us. We tend to take on a stronger voice than a lot of women feel comfortable doing.
Kayla: We also had to define what we are and who we are when we were younger. You don’t want to go backwards and not be out about something you want to do. We never really set out to make a creative agency, it started because we were really just trying to survive. Our jobs (before) just didn’t feel good.
Hannah: We knew that we weren’t getting hired for jobs because we were women or because we were gay and we look gay.
What advice would you give young designers?
Hannah: If design is like solving a problem or completing an end goal, then it’s successful. I think everything else is subjective opinion. Like you see like how what is considered good design has like shifted throughout like the past hundred years. I think people should be more confident, especially women about what they know because none of this is really real. If you’re doing something new and different, that’s accomplishing a goal. It’s not just about what everybody else is doing because that creates homogenization and honestly really boring design.
