Macy Burr and Anna Jacobs

Macy Burr and Anna Jacobs are both freelance designers in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Married last year, the couple works on design and marketing projects with local restaurants and businesses. Anna has 10 years of design experience and decided in 2017 to pursue freelance after working at Doxa, a brand and communication design firm. Macy recently decided to leave her career in startup companies as a designer to start her own company  Soundscape Studio, a business which creates prints that are visual representations of music, and work on freelance designing.

Anna and Macy met in a Professional Development class during Macy’s senior year. With the design students about to graduate, one of Macy’s professors invited graphic design professionals to speak to the class. Macy had admired Anna’s work, without meeting her, for most of her college career. Macy’s teacher knew about her admiration and suggested that Macy show Anna her work. The two decided to meet at Maxine's for drinks.

“I didn’t go intending to get a girlfriend or wife,” Anna joked. The two sat smiling as they described the life that they have built together. “We are on the same page with minimal effort, and the fact that we are both designers makes things really easy and seamless,” Macy added.

“At first I thought it would be really weird to date someone in the same profession as me. But after a hard day, and you have a specific thing that happened to you, I can just go to her and tell her exactly what happened. And she just gets it, without a whole lot of added context, because we have both been there,” Macy continued.

Now that the two work from home together they are even more in sync. They work in separate rooms on their projects but share ideas on their own personal Slack channel. “Sometimes I will just yell across the house, ‘Is this ugly?’ and send it to Anna,”  Macy described.

Anna’s interest in design stemmed from working on the yearbook staff in high school. “I’ve always done something in art. I was very much the ‘art kid.’” Anna felt that her art skills translated well into yearbook; she described that she first "figured out that design existed" while working in this class.

“That’s when I realized that people make what’s on these pages,” Anna told me. “It’s not just something that happens. From then on it was game over for me.” After this experience, Anna enrolled in the graphic design program at the University of Arkansas, where she worked as a designer for the UofA programs, and after graduation, began her work at Doxa.

Recently, Anna has worked on projects with Hannah Withers, a local business woman who owns Maxine’s, Leverett Lounge, started Little Bread Co., and helped coordinate NWA Pride in 2018, which is the largest Pride celebration in Arkansas to date. “Every project I do for her is cool to some extent,” Anna shared. “Working with her has been a springboard for my career.”

One of Anna’s favorite projects to work on with Hannah is the transformation of Sit and Spin to Leverett Lounge. Sit and Spin was a laundromat and restaurant close to Dickson Street, the hub of activity in Fayetteville. The restaurant wasn’t as profitable as the owners were hoping so the restaurant went through a quick transformation into a tapas bar. “They needed a new identity and logo really quickly. Hannah reached out and said that we work really well together, but we need to switch gears, so let’s do it again,” Anna described. “Hannah and I are always on a rollercoaster ride together.”

Macy was a serial startup designer. Working primarily in startups, Macy feels “less formally trained than a lot of people.” Up until her last job Macy hadn’t worked with another designer. Learning on her own, Macy “learned slowly to figure some things out." She paused, "But it made me more scrappy in a way. I had to rely on myself a lot more. Even though it was a struggle in itself it was beneficial.”

Her newest project,Soundscape Studio, is “a total 180” from Macy’s past jobs. “Being a business owner was my dream,” Anna said. Macy interjected, “I always thought that she would start an empire and I would be one of her minions.” Now it is Macy who is building a business, a role she previously would not have pictured herself in.

“Soundscape Studio started out as a gift for Anna. I was trying to make something really cool for her since she always gives me these amazingly thought out and well designed gifts,” Macy told me. But she was having a difficult time deciding what to make Anna. “I had a prompt,” Macy shared. “Anna doesn’t know anything about music, and since I’ve played the piano for over 10 years, I wanted to give her something that let her appreciate music the way that I do.”

“I was driving in my car after visiting a few friends in Dallas,” Macy said. “After five hours alone, the gears were turning and it just came to me.” The first song that Macy created was her and Anna’s song: “All of Me” by John Legend.  

Since then the business has been doing well. “I had a few orders here and there for a couple of months,” Macy told me. Later, Anna suggested that Macy show her items at the Little Craft Show, Arkansas’ indie craft show that takes place twice a year in Northwest Arkansas. “It was the first time I had printed inventory in bulk and I just had to go for it. After the show, I had a really positive response. It encouraged me to keep going.”

The Little Craft Show gave Macy momentum to apply to Made by Few, another regional craft show, and send an email to Arsaga’s, a local craft coffee shop, to take part in their First Thursday Artist showing. “I just kept getting yes after yes. Ever since that happened, I’ve been continuing to apply to things and reach out to stores.”

“It’s been crazy,” Anna said. “I really liked the gift when I got it, but I wouldn’t have been able to imagine any of this. It has been random in a good way. She would obsessively work for two or three weeks and I would have to make her stop so that we could go do anything else. With how much time we spend working on it, it’s hard to imagine a time when we didn’t have Soundscape Studio. We will lay in bed and talk about ‘what if we did this and this’.”

The couple loves to hear suggestions from others. “It inspires ideas in other people,” Anna said. “You know it is a good design solution when everyone understands it. It’s like a smile in the mind.”

Macy and Anna haven’t always had the easiest time with their jobs and personal lives combining. When Macy first began talking to Anna she also started her first job. “I was so excited to be in a new relationship, but I didn’t want to get fired for for texting non-stop. I’m usually pretty quiet about my personal life but the company that I was at was more traditional with more conservative employees.”

Macy decided early on that she wouldn’t talk to her colleagues about her relationship. “I missed the chance to say something in the beginning when they were asking me if I dated anyone, and so afterwards I felt alienated, weird and disconnected from everyone.”

Macy decided not to bring Anna to team events and when asked about her relationships she would keep quiet. “Into the second year, anytime there was an event I would just tag along with my friend and her husband,” Macy said. “That far into working for the company it would have been awkward at that point to bring Anna.” Macy feels like it would be especially awkward since she had been with Anna since the beginning of her time working there.

“I felt like I had missed my opportunity. Maybe a reason I never connected to that job is that I was living a lie,” Macy shared. But now Macy feel like she has “realized the mistake that (she) had made.”

“From day one,” Macy said, looking at Anna, “I am going to be really open. Because even if you are surrounded by people who wouldn’t be okay with something about who you are, it’s better to never filter yourself to their expectations on what they think you are.”

Macy’s colleagues at her old job saw the photos of Anna’s and Macy’s wedding shortly after she left the company. “And they were really welcoming and nice,” Macy said chuckling. “I was so scared about people’s reactions that I judged them as much as I thought they were going to judge me.”

Her advice to people in similar situations? “Just correct them and be funny about it. Their responses won’t affect who you are and if they respond poorly? Just go with people who like you for you.”