Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Chipman.
Hi Jennifer, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I guess you could say I’ve always had a love for interior design. Even as a young girl, I was constantly rearranging my bedroom. In middle school, I had my own wallpaper business where I would use leftover wallpaper scraps to decorate my friend’s lockers it was a great idea until the school made me scrape it all off at the end of the year! After graduating high school, I briefly pursued a degree in chemical engineering before realizing I needed to follow my passion for interior design. I switched my major and graduated from the University of Utah with my BS in Environment and Behavior.
After school, I freelanced while raising my family, and then in 2013, I decided to leave my freelance work and take a leap of faith with a startup design firm here in Park City. As one of the original designers, I grew with the company and watched them become one of the leading firms in the area. It was a pretty wild transition for my family and me, but I loved every second! The experience elevated my career in ways that I couldn’t have imagined, and I finally got the opportunity to work on projects that stretched my creativity and expanded my knowledge of the building process even further. I worked for the firm for nearly a decade and loved it!
But, life has seasons for everything, and those seasons always end. In 2020 I started to experience some significant burnout. I was juggling 17 projects at once, and I could barely keep my head above the water! I realized that my passion for design had all but gone away because I was so focused on meeting my clients’ deadlines. The following year, I realized something had to change. My work-life balance was no longer sustainable for me because I had changed as a person and realized that my career needed to shift as well.
That was when Chelsey, one of my current clients at the time, approached me out of the blue with the opportunity to start a new design firm. After months of serious contemplation, I finally took her up on the matter and decided to leave the firm I had been so dedicated to and take on this new adventure. And Bond Design Company was born!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting Bond Design Company has been anything but a smooth road, to be completely honest. Leaving a company and a career I loved and was comfortable with was hard! I had friends there. I had more work than I could ask for. I had a routine and security. But I knew deep down that something was missing. I needed to grow in new ways and knew that growth wouldn’t happen inside my comfort zone.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Since starting Bond, I have wanted to focus on returning to my passion. Not only do I want to design spaces, but I want to create moments of joy! I firmly believe that we are each fundamentally connected to our environments and that those environments should be an exciting reflection of our lifestyles, energy, and personalities. So, what makes Bond unique is that we call ourselves a ’boutique’ design firm.
We only take on a limited number of projects so that we can fully invest ourselves into our clients’ visions and savor the creative process during each project. By limiting our workload, we deliver better, more personalized results and enjoy the process more! I want my work to be my creative outlet, not just a means to a paycheck.
So maybe we end by discussing what matters most to you and why.
Relationships are what matter most to me in my life. The name “Bond” refers to the connections between people and spaces based on shared emotions, interests, and experiences. Bond was founded on the friendship between designer and client. Bond is all about connection. And I think that plays an extremely significant role in not only my work but in my personal life as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bonddesigncompany.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bonddesigncompany/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bonddesigncompany
Image Credits
Lindsay Salazar
