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Everybody has an opinion about chartreuse. Merely mention the color to someone and they’ll tell you why you love it or why they… love it not so much. Somehow everybody has a chartreuse story.

“Great branding and design strategy makes someone want to do something. It makes movement.” That’s how Charity D’Amato-Crawford described her creative philosophy to us when she stopped by the Mompreneur Co Studio this week. Her design studio, Studio Chartreuse, is proof of that philosophy in action. She’s been keeping people in Cleveland talking about chartreuse for 20 years.

Charity sat down with us for an hour to chat about those 20 years she’s spent running her design studio and refining her principles for her creative services. She talked to us about the behind-the-scenes for making some of the most creative brands and designs in Cleveland, the crazy coincidence the happened the day she told the team she was pregnant, and — of course — the chartreuse story.

Here are some highlights from our conversation:

The Birth of Studio Chartreuse [04:12]

Charity began her career in an advertising job she went to school for and had always envisioned for herself. And even though she was doing the type of work she loved, she just didn’t feel 100% connected to the company’s mission of selling roast beef sandwiches at scale.

So she dove into the early 2000s world of freelance designing, working a retail job on the side. She found herself calling off her retail work more and more — something she wouldn’t normally even think of! — to focus on her design work.

When a huge project with a dream client came knocking, she knew she needed to start hiring a team if she wanted to make that dream happen. And twenty years later, she’s still doing it with Studio Chartreuse.

The Power of Working In Person [16:29]

“I love holding client meetings in person whenever we can. Because then I can say hey, you have a really great bag, I like that brand. And you can say oh my gosh, it, I got this five years ago when I was in Paris and I was inspired by this and that … and it becomes this whole conversation. And then I know you better and I’m able to create for you better and my team is able to create with you better.”

Creative Problem Solving: More than Creative Design Alone [19:06]

Charity tells us how she handles one of the most common requests in the design world: logos.

She explains the creative problem solving approach to developing a logo and talks about when that approach leads to not developing one. Hear how she describes when you may just need some great support materials to help you lean into what people already know you for.

How Your Brand Makes People Feel [26:24]

Charity talks us through how she loves considering how every element of a product or service makes us feel, from the time we first learn about it to the time we first use it. This is where she digs into some real gold about pushing yourself outside the realm of “what everybody else is doing” — because that’s what sparks conversations.

“We’re not just creative designers — we’re creative problem solvers.” And the most critical problem we solve is how we communicate our mission and inspire others to believe in it the way that we do.