Faces of Design: Designing Your Future With Sarah Kuchar

Tyler Kern on Jan 2, 2019

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Sarah Kuchar joined hosts Daniel Litwin and Bryce Stuckenschneider for a podcast interview to accompany the latest installment of MarketScale’s Faces of Design series.

What followed was an in-depth interview about the challenges of striking out on your own to start your own business and the risks and rewards that come with that.

“I saw myself more and more going against the stream with the designs I was creating,” said Kuchar. “I think that’s probably what started the idea.”

The idea is just the beginning, however. Starting her own studio required her to find answers to a number of questions, including office space, creating a website, and finding an accountant. “I think that when you have your own business you have to weigh what do you spend money on to save your time, which is valuable, and then what can you just do yourself and put in the extra hours to save a higher cost,” she said.

Kuchar herself spent a lot of time transforming her new office into the highly functional space that the business required.

What resulted from the hard work of building her own studio was the ability for her to execute the designs that she is passionate about and to be involved in the details of a project.

“I love getting into the small details of a cabinet and a pull and the detail on the face of that cabinet…I couldn’t get to that level on the really big projects,” Kuchar said. “I missed that level of detail and how personal it gets.”

Her unique design and attention to detail is on full display with the project they did for Codeverse, a program dedicated to teaching kids how to code. “They wanted it to feel like the classroom of the future,” she said. “A lot of the forms in the space are all curved and encourage movement throughout the space.”

Kuchar also incorporated elements of what the kids are learning into the space.

“The entire classroom can be hacked by the kids. So, they can make lights turn on and off or turn colors,” she added.

Launching your own enterprise can be extremely challenging, but through it all, Kuchar said it’s all worth it.

“The lows are really low and you have to keep your head up. But the highs are so high and that keeps me going.”