Art has a way of making lives brighter and more beautiful; may that be in the form of a painting, a handmade mug, or a knitted scarf, each has the potential to make anyone’s day. Two best friends, Carrie Kiefer and Morgan Georgie, believed in that and made it their mission to bring art—their art—to a wider audience and spread good vibes by creating Ampersand Design Studio.
Ampersand Design Studio is a Kansas City-born lifestyle store that offers a wide range of products, including art pieces, stationery, home decor, kitchen goods, and clothing, all of which are designed by co-founders and designers, Carrie and Morgan, and are embellished with their vibrant and playful designs, which perfectly encapsulate both their signature aesthetic.
To extend their brand aesthetic beyond their products, Ampersand partners with noissue for their sustainable packaging essentials to make every shopping experience for their customers—both online and in store—even more special. Read on to learn all about Ampersand’s story, design process, and noissue packaging picks!
Tell us a bit about your brand!
Hi everyone! Happy to be here!
We’re Carrie Kiefer & Morgan Georgie, art school colleagues-turned-best friends. After school, we worked together as graphic designers in the corporate world, all the while dreaming of what we would do if we ever went out on our own! We never stopped creating art for ourselves, we freelanced, we started a design blog and slowly built up our portfolio of surface patterns and art that we wanted to introduce to the world. After about 10 years, we finally made the leap into small business ownership (following in both of our father's footsteps!).
In 2010, Ampersand Design Studio was brought to life with our bold, colorful surface pattern designs. We've made it our mission to design looks and lives that inspire creativity, radiate optimism, and encourage connection! Our patterns are bold, our colors are bright, and the sophisticated way they play together is what makes our work unique. To most people's surprise, we are BOTH the artists. Together, we create each design using paint, cut paper, pen and ink (honestly, anything we can get our hands on!) and we love incorporating typography and hand-drawn lettering into the mix. Our art has landed on products like wallpaper, bedding, pillows, fabric by the yard, stationery and kitchen & tabletop textiles! We've been beyond fortunate to partner with companies like West Elm, Crate & Kids, Minted and Target for product collaborations!
While we love the big collaborations, we also created a line of our own brand of goods including apparel, accessories, home decor, and stationery. In 2023, just last spring, we made another big leap… into opening a brick & mortar store in our hometown of Kansas City! We found the perfect neighborhood and a space just two doors up from our favorite bakery, and we knew it was our new home! Although we had always dreamed of having our logo on the front of our very own store, we hadn't quite understood how fulfilling it would be to be physically present to talk to all the visitors that come in. Now, we get to hear WHY someone is choosing to buy one of our pillows for her best friend or help put together the perfect gift bundle for a Mother's Day gift. We want everything we do to have a special, unique touch that is clearly Ampersand!
Tell us about the design for your packaging and how you’re using them?
When it came to designing our packaging, we knew that it needed to be special! Whether you have ordered from us online or visited the store in person, we wanted our customers to know they've received something created out of our love of color, pattern and FUN!
We have several different stickers with playful messages, one with our logo and then packaging tape that combines one of our signature statement-making patterns and artistic color palette! We use the stickers on EVERYTHING and the packaging tape is simply the most fun signature of every package that lands in a new home!
What made noissue a good fit for your packaging?
One of our main missions at Ampersand is to be less of a burden on the environment and more of an asset to our community! We bring our products to life with soy-based inks and recycled materials, so choosing noissue for our packaging was an easy decision.
With noissue's mission to make sustainable packaging accessible to all businesses, brands and makers, we knew we were in alignment. Partnering with another company that wants to reduce waste by offering packaging that is reusable, compostable or made from recycled materials yet simultaneously offering stickers in all kinds of sizes and gorgeous, rich colors on the printed materials, we were a perfect match.