I often send my work to businesses I admire around Oklahoma and a few other states to introduce myself and offer services. This is how I book at least 50% of my projects! Sometimes, business owners and their teams will sit on the idea until the right time comes along, and that’s exactly what happened with this mural project for The Inviting Place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

The Inviting Place provides Oklahomans with custom, unique stationery and invitation design and also has curated party supplies and gifts. Their talented team of designers also create incredible stationery kits for weddings and beyond. Their company is housed in a beautiful white building complete with black awnings, clean black signage, and most importantly to me- a street-facing, blank white wall perfect for additional signage or artwork.

Not only is this business in an ideal consumer location near a busy intersection at 21st and Harvard here in Tulsa, but this large unobstructed wall is in full view of all westbound traffic. The Inviting Place team fully understood the potential of using this wall to communicate more about who they are as a company and engage their audience. When you have permission to paint your exterior, or better yet, own your building, why wouldn’t you use it as your very own billboard?!

I got the email to go forward in late May. We immediately consulted, decided on scale and design direction, and I went to work.

First, the client is offered three different design options to start. This helps explore all the variables and gives myself and the client a baseline to discuss which direction is best and what revisions will be needed. Here are the looks we started with:

We played with all elements relating to what they do as a stationery design studio, using the envelope, and handwritten letter as a focal point to drive home the main message: ‘So Glad You Are Here.’ We played with those elements surrounding the focal point until we arrived at the best aesthetic direction for them. 

Which option would you have chosen? Let me know in the comments!

Option 3 was the winner! We went to work with smaller alterations, like changing out the least relevant icons for a repeating pattern instead, changing the flowers from carnations, to peonies, and other minor color changes.

The final change included a stylistic change on the flowers, and the decision to drop the cartoon-like black outline for a more sophisticated drop shadow. This made all the difference in the world and really lets this color palette interact beautifully with each other!

Here is the final design mocked up on the wall, so that the team can truly assess the success of the design:

Now that the design was finalized, I could get to work on the application. Now, the team had a goal to take professional photos with the mural for a publication the week after application. So, this mural had to be applied pronto!

Did I mention this mural is 200 square feet in total? It measure 20 ft wide and 10 ft tall. This project was scheduled to take 3 days for application, but with the heat, painting was limited to mornings and evenings and in totality five days were spent painting to completion. Still a great turnaround for the team to take photos right on time!

I’m sure this artwork will intrigue so many more potential customers, while the bright and happy design will bring a little joy to everyone else. This was a very successful branded mural, in that it informs future customers more about who resides in this lovely building, excites existing customers, and also enriches the area by bringing more artwork to the community. 

Do you think this design was successful? Which initial design option might you have chosen if you were in their shoes? I want to hear from you!

Check out my Instagram to see more reels of the painting process for this project and check out other work while you’re there.

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