Brand Journey — Bess Creator, Christy Mack’s, Story: SLO Bound to Dive Into Arts and Culture Branding (Part 4)
Opportunity knocked and Christy moved from San Francisco to the Central Coast of California with her husband Nick, son Noah and rescue dog Maple, the best lab-husky mix ever.
San Luis Obispo (SLO) quickly became home sweet home, and the perfect spot to launch her arts, culture and community-minded work.
When talking about her time in SLO Christy recalls, “I got my start freelancing by partnering with iii Design, a SLO creative studio. I went from being a client to providing for clients, from hiring global research agencies to conducting my own research, and from having multimillion-dollar brand budgets to working with budgets on a totally different scale. It was a big change. It taught me to hone in on what was most important for developing these creatively beautiful for good brands that I envisioned. I also learned how to get super imaginative to make things happen at a local level.”
“With iii Design, Christy converted the San Luis Obispo Art Center to the region’s first Art Museum under a three-year $225,000 James Irvine Foundation grant, and re-launched the San Luis Obispo Children’s Museum brand after a $5 million rebuild.”
“Reimagining brands for these community-centered cultural institutions was some of my best creative work. I was shaping the role of these organizations for people living in, and visiting, the Central Coast. We had to envision how these museums would define themselves and what they would bring to the community.”
It was a time when Christy’s brand research discovered museums where perceived as sterile, intimidating and somewhat detached. “So we wanted to change that. To remove the distance coming between the public and cultural experiences, and re-engage people with these wonderful museums right in their own backyards,” Christy says with a big smile.
She continues, “We partnered with museum boards of directors, executive leadership, staff, and volunteers to create lively and nurturing brands and experiences at both museums. We added temporary exhibits, installations people could touch and contribute to, and entirely new programming that spoke to messier explorations. ‘A new kind of art museum’ became our big idea as we converted the San Luis Obispo Art Center to an art museum and we made ‘Have you played today?’ the focus for the Children’s Museum brand.”
With both museums in good places and new opportunities back in the Bay, Christy packed up her family for the move north, this time settling in the East Bay.