Meet Kennedy Roberts | Photographer & Web Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kennedy Roberts and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kennedy, what’s the most important lesson your business/career has taught you?
That more afraid I am, the closer I am to the heart of it. Over the course of starting my business, KAR creative, there have been many moments of fear. Of course there was the fear that we would run out of money or that work would stop coming. There was also the fear that I wasn’t a strong enough artist or creative of business person to make it work. But more than any of that there was always the steady pulse of fear behind signing contracts on projects that seemed to be just a little bit beyond where we were at in that current moment. When we pitched a mood board that was a bit more complicated than anything we had ever done, or took on a web design project that was bigger than anything we had done – it always came with the fear that we were out of our league.
The fear was valid – when it came up we could be sure we were in for some hard work. But what was probably more true than that, was that when I was more afraid we were always on the precipice of the next big thing for the business: the next big project, added service, portfolio piece. Really, whenever I have been most afraid it has been an indicator that I was getting closer to the heart of the work I’m supposed to be doing.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a photographer and branding and web designer working primarily with indie and emerging brands in the wellness space. I technically started my business in 2018 after leaving my full-time job as an in-house communications manager for a beverage brand. At the time my business was really just me, as a freelancer, working on social media projects. I told myself during that first year that I was going to give myself the time and space to explore – to take on different kinds of projects, try on new mediums and be abundantly open to however my career would shake out. What I recognized during that first year, was that what I had been missing at my full-time roles as an in-house creative was the ability to make human-first creative.

What I mean is that, I learned that the ‘good’ creative always came out of diverse rooms where people were able to try and fail and blow the budget sometimes and take Friday’s off when they stayed up all night editing a project. I realized that although our economy demands more content and creative than ever before – in order to rise to the challenge, we needed to challenge the creative economy and do things differently. So as I started to work with more collaborators and envision the next steps for my brand and work – I recognized that what was most important for me was to build a space to create that is human-first : that let’s itself get messy and try something new, and screw up a couple of times before getting it right.

And in doing this what I think we’ve found, and I know our clients agree, is a way to streamline the process of making creative and content that doesn’t feel so much like work for us or our clients. And ultimately a space for myself and my team to continue exploring creativity in action as we create and recreate ourselves and the brands that we work with.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’ve only been living Downtown since the pandemic – so my list of regular hangs isn’t that extensive but so far these are my go-to spots:

– Morning coffee at No Ghost Bears in the Fashion District followed by an obligatory cruise around the Flower Market.
– Mid-morning walk (or run) around the Silverlake Reservoir followed by coffee at Laveta (coffee is the biggest theme here).
– Sip on orange wine with a side of sourdough pizza at Grá in Echo Park Village.
– Sandwiches from Wax Paper in Chinatown – the Ophira Eisenberg is unmatched.
– An afternoon at the Hammer Museum. The MADE in LA exhibition is my favorite exhibit of the year.
– Wine shopping at Wine & Eggs in Atwater Village.
– An afternoon at Melody in Echo Park.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Puno & the team at ilovecreatives. Despite minoring in photography in college, I really wasn’t aware that freelancing was even an option, let alone something that people did full-time. So after deciding to leave my full-time job I was pretty much at a total loss for where to start, how to get clients, how to charge them… the list goes on. Puno and ilovecreatives have offered me a pile of resources to figure all of that out while making it still seem cool and fun (which if you’re a business owner you know can be hard to do).

Website: www.karcreativestudios.com

Instagram: @karcreative and @kennedyannroberts

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennedyannroberts

Image Credits
All image credit to Kennedy Ann Roberts and KAR Creative Studios.