Anyone who has started a small business can understand the difficulty of choosing a name for that business. We can relate. One of the first decisions we had to make together was what to call our design studio. While it took us a bit of time to create a name that displayed our vision and purpose, we now enjoy looking back on this story and sharing it with others.

While many firms use the names of their members to identify their firm, that wasn’t the direction we wanted to go. We wanted to find adjectives that would somehow describe our thought process, design process, and our innate drive for our work. The name we did want, however, still alluded us. In the process, we tried several combinations that now just make us laugh.

During this time, we would meet on Tuesday evenings to discuss the future of our business: our plan, name, vision, and other items that came to us throughout the day. Finding the right name was critically important to us because we wanted it to reflect the root of our passion for our work, our beliefs in design, and our desire to care for our clients well. It was not something we wanted to rush into because it was of utmost importance.

One of these Tuesday evenings, we met at Zac’s house. That evening, we had set our minds to putting the matter of our name to rest. As we were thinking and discussing possibilities, Zac looked up and said, “I like the word ‘Wisdom,' it says something to me.” We considered this possibility for a moment. At the same time, Jay asked, “What about Craftsmanship?”, and Jimmy said, “What about Artistry?”.

At that moment, we realized we were getting somewhere. Each of us had chosen an adjective that was a critical pillar to who we are as designers. We spent a few more minutes arranging the three words until we decided upon “Wisdom, Craftsmanship, Artistry.” Those words became the ethos of our work and our business. Over the next few days, we chose to use the first initial for each word, and WCA Design Studio was born. Our official birthday is July 17, 2014.

It’s amazing to see all that our first year has brought. We are grateful for the experiences that lead to the creation of WCA Design Studio, as well as for the people who have chosen us for their projects. We can’t wait to see all this next year holds!