Honest Media

01/13/2025

We are excited to announce David Nanda as our new Creative Director at Honest Studios! 🙌🏼🔥 David has been a pillar on our team and going into 2025 we are thrilled to have his creative leadership in full force!

“I have personally been working with David since 2014 and have seen in him the character, tenacity, passion, commitment, taste and discernment necessary to represent Honest Studios and serve as our Creative Director.”
- Jeremy Bardwell, Co-Founder & CEO

Here are some words from David about this new season for him:

Creative direction has become my life’s fascination. I could argue creativity is one of the most underestimated and undervalued aspects of life—not just in business, or branding, but as a part of the human experience. Becoming a Creative Director was a dream of mine since I first fell in love with branding almost 10 years ago. I’ve only become more and more fascinated by the influence of creativity each year since. I’ve studied it officially and have built my career around it, but my love for creativity is deepend most of all when I’m not supposed to be working. Occupying my mind daily—constantly critiquing, constantly inspired, screen-shotting and concepting—whether film or fashion—music, photography, color, typography, poetry, strategy, beauty, emotion, balance—the fusion, collision and harmony of artforms of all kinds I am hooked on the endlessness of what’s possible.

I believe a part of my purpose is to explore this endlessness. To better understand and capture its power and influence, and to use it to activate and inspire. I believe art and creativity is God’s gift to humanity as a means to change the world. Honored to be a part of the incredible story of Honest Studios. I’ve been shaped by this community. The past 5 years Honest has allowed me to live out my calling to create, build brands, support and activate those who are changing the world. It truly feels like the start of a new season, I can’t wait to see what we get to create.

Join us in celebrating David and this new season for Honest!

12/26/2024

As we reflect on 2024, we want to take a moment to express our deepest gratitude to you—our friends, clients, and partners. This incredible journey is only possible because of the trust, collaboration, and the relationships we share with each of you.

This Christmas, we hope you find time to reflect on what matters most: faith, family, friends, and the blessings of this season of new birth and hope for redemption.

12/23/2024

A Well-Designed Holiday Party & Market in collaboration with .annex.mpls was a beautiful evening full of connection, community, laughter, shopping local and of course it was capped off with a classic Minnesota meat raffle!

Mega shout out to all our curated local vendors:
candles




company
objects

12/05/2024

IT’S CHRISTMAS PARTY TIME!! 🎄🙌🏼

You’re invited to join us for “A Well-Designed Holiday Party” at 7pm, Friday, December 13th at in their event space called .annex.mpls 👏🏼 the theme of “Well-Designed” came from the fact that we are an agency that loves design, and the Scout Workshop crew, many of them are architects, interior designers, and creative people by trade. So combining the party with 17 local well-designed vendors is a celebration of our shared passion for good design. 👌🏼

All info and tickets at the link in bio! DM us for a big discount code. We want everyone who wants to come to be able to! 💪🏼💪🏼

We have had some legendary Christmas Parties over the years and last year we couldn’t have one. BUT, this year WE’RE BACK!

Join us the evening of Friday Dec 13th for a night of celebration, food, Christmas cocktails, connection and cheer. Plus early access to all 17 of our well-designed vendors! THEY WILL ALL BE THERE. 🙌🏼🎉

This years party is in collaboration with in their event space called .annex.mpls it is a beautiful space with an incredible community.

Tickets are available at the link in bio!

DM us for a huge discount code available only to our Honest community!! We just want people to be there but to also cover the expense for food and drinks. 😅

MARK YOUR CALENDARS and tell your friends! We are so happy to be able to come back together this year.

Warmly, The Honest Team

11/22/2024

**5 NEW WELL-DESIGNED VENDORS** added today!

We are thrilled by the momentum behind A Well-Designed Holiday Party & Market! Now with 15 curated local vendors for you to explore - and more being added!

Our Well-Designed Vendors:

Onyx Candles .candles
Kabomelette
Cardigan Donuts
Jena Holliday - A Spoonful of Faith
Artifacts of Joy
Sound Woven Goods
Happy Monday & Co .company
Ashtyn Sibinski Art
Inch Objects .objects
Lucille’s Bottle Shop
Isadore Nuts
Pansy Floral
Moth & Scythe
B Friendly Cocktails
Summer Snow Studio

A Well-Designed Holiday is a TWO DAY event - A Holiday Party & A Holiday Market.

Friday Evening 6-10 The HOLIDAY PARTY with delicious food, seasonal cocktails, giveaways and more. It will be an evening to remember! Come Celebrate with us and get early access to the vendors. TICKETS are $25 which includes your food and drinks! LINK IN BIO.

Saturday All- Day 10am-6pm The HOLIDAY MARKET. The market is FREE and open to the public! Come and shop all our well designed local vendors and grab seasonal coffee, donuts, and food at our food truck. INFO AT LINK IN BIO.

We hope to see you there. With much love and well wishes. The Annex & Honest Studios Teams.

11/22/2024

11/19/2024

Love great design?? Us too. Which is why you should join us for our “A Well-Designed Holiday Party & Market.” 😱

LINK IN BIO for all information and tickets to the party!

“A Well-Designed Holiday” is 2 back-to-back events:

Friday, Dec 13th from 6pm-10pm is our PARTY. This party will be a ticketed event to help us cover delicious charcuterie, custom cocktails and entertainment for all! The evening will be festive, communal and cozy as we celebrate out community together. ALL our market vendors will be there so you will also get early access to their offerings. Tickets are $25/person and SPACE IS LIMITED! We hope to see you there!

Saturday, Dec 14th from 10am-6pm will be our MARKET. Featuring local well-designed brands. We have curated some of our favorite vendors for you to visit, enjoy and of course SHOP. The market is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

All information and access to tickets for the party can be found at the LINK IN BIO.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out! Tickets are very limited and will sell fast so don’t delay! And from all of us at The Annex & Honest Studios we wish you the happiest of holidays! 🎄

10/31/2024

Gathered back in our old digs at our secret spot to celebrate some big team wins!!! We had a lot to cheers to this evening!!!

10/17/2024

These are the only pictures I have (taken with an old smart phone) when I worked with community based organizations and the UN in response to the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. We were on the ground 8 days after the earthquake and were there for the large aftershock that brought further devastation. I ran out into an open field in my underwear because it hit right at dawn. It was a transformational experience being in the presence of such need.

One of the simple questions lurking behind Honest Studios is this, “why don’t organizations and people doing incredible work that could alleviate human/environmental suffering have the same quality (if not better) storytelling as big consumer brands?” And in 2004, when we first began asking this question, there was a major gap - and there still is.

This is why Honest exists. To help for-impact groups get their message out to the world so they can maximize their impact. Sometimes 10-20-100X.

This year we are excited to be continuing this focus by working with a client on scaling a revolutionary new model for hyper-local crisis response. A model that dignifies local leaders and recognizes the people on the ground knows best how to get resources to where the real need is and FAST.

This is one of many new projects we are moving into 2025 with and we are excited! Thanks for following our journey these last almost 7 years. Got some exciting new things coming up. 💪🏼🙏🏼

09/26/2024

We crossed an INCREDIBLE milestone at Honest this year…

From a kid raised by hippies in a log cabin in the Puget Sound (this is writing) and whose change-making career started in little surf chapels in Hawaii and tiny rural villages in Alaska, it is wild to be able to say that since moving to Minnesota 7 years ago and launching Honest we have partnered with over 100 unique change-making organizations!

These are:

100+ organizations that have been branded and launched or rebranded and repositioned to powerfully communicate their vision and establish a strong foundation for their future impact.

100+ organizations whose messaging needed to be crafted for the first time or had become so outdated they were languishing in confusion in need of an overhaul from the ground up across complex communication platforms and technology.

100+ organizations who were wanting to mobilize a generation nationally and globally towards their cause through both events and digital campaigns but had no practical plan to execute this and be effective at that scale.

100+ organizations who fight day and night to serve their communities and effect positive change with their unique missions whose story has now been told in compelling new media pieces and captured in transformative content and curriculum.

100+ organizations whose fundraising had slipped behind and required fresh life, vision, and strategy to get their sustainability back on track for a new season of historic growth.

I could go on and on. In reality there are 100+ stories because each of our clients has had unique needs and were impacting the world in ways only they could.

Excited for the next 100! But it might take longer because we seem to be working with fewer groups for longer. So we’ll see!

I love what we do through Honest. We have the BEST team. It truly consider this work both a career and a calling. 📈🙏🏼💪🏼

09/12/2024

I am looking for talented, professional website designers/developers to hire for few projects this fall through Honest Studios. 🎉🧑🏻‍💻👀

We are looking for people who work primarily in Wordpress but also Webflow and Shopify.

If that is you or you know of anyone please put a comment below!

09/08/2024

Go ahead, Make Mistakes - Embracing the Path of Innovation

Pioneering Honest from nothing into a growing business has been an epic journey of trial and error, of pushing boundaries and humbly learning from every single phase. If ever we had just said “this is it, we don’t need to change again” we would have been dead in the water. As entrepreneurs we can often fall into the trap of wanting to execute flawlessly. But here’s the real raw truth: It’s not about getting it perfect; it’s about moving forward, failing, learning, and iterating in a way that is continuously improving.

As Elon Musk instructs all his teams, we must strip things down to their core, removing unnecessary layers of complexity until we are left only with what must be added back in. He says don’t stop removing and simplifying until it at least 10% of what was removed needs to be added back in. (10% were mistakenly removed) If not that much needs to be added back, then not enough was removed. Mistakes then are a signal/sign of right progress and a necessary part of the plan.

“Make Mistakes” poster seen in the basement of

07/09/2024

Have you ever noticed the “O” in Honest of our Honest Studios logo is slightly tilted?

This is our nod to the reality that no one is perfect with all the right answers.

“Honest” doesn’t mean being the rightest, it is more accurately the pursuit of healing your wrongness.

July 4th was my () 7th year anniversary of moving to Minneapolis. In that time we have experienced many different seasons and are in such a beautiful one now. But the important thing to remember as an artist/entrepreneur is that going back to what worked before isn’t always right, sometimes it is, but more likely the same pain, fight and material that led to your message years ago is generating in you a CURRENT message that will resonate now.

This is what it means to be Honest, to embrace who you are today. To truly love yourself as you are today as if you are caring for someone that you know could change the world.

Cheers to the journey of taking care of yourself so that you can take care of others! Cheers to staying humble hidden and hungry for more. Cheers to following your dreams and making a difference in the world because the world needs what you have! 🙏🏼

07/07/2024

Have you ever noticed the “O” in Honest of our Honest Studios logo is slightly tilted?

This is our nod to the reality that no one is perfect with all the right answers.

“Honest” to us doesn’t mean being the rightest, it is more accurately the passionate long-term pursuit of losing our wrongness.

July 4th was my () 7th year anniversary of moving to Minneapolis. In that time we have experienced many different seasons and are in such a beautiful one now. But the important thing to remember as an artist/entrepreneur is that going back to what worked before isn’t always right, sometimes it is, but more likely the same pain, fight and material that led to your message years ago is generating in you a CURRENT message that will resonate now.

This is what it means to be Honest, to embrace who you are today. To truly love yourself as you are today as if you are caring for someone that you know could change the world.

Cheers to the journey of taking care of yourself so that you can take care of others! Cheers to staying humble hidden and hungry for more. Cheers to following your dreams and making a difference in the world because the world needs what you have! 🙏🏼

06/05/2024

Sorry we haven’t been super active on here recently, been busy and trying to prioritize real life over reel of life. 😉

For us the secret high ground that drives our success that we will not surrender is staying grounded, centered, and honest.

Thats what resonates no matter the format.

We do believe in sharing and connecting on here tho, and we have some new work, business insights and behind the scenes stories to share in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

05/02/2024

Some cool things brewing in St. Paul. 🙏🏼

04/16/2024

In this season of working from home we will have some familiar sights around. 😎

Did anyone else see that our old studio in North Loop is now a a high end cannabis shop?? Weird. 😂

…..

03/25/2024

“What if your electricity usage effected you the way it effects your environment?” Check out this concept poster we designed for a campaign World Wildlife Fund was leading out in Thailand.

We named, messaged, designed and developed an experiential exhibit in Bangkok to bring awareness to the deforestation and pollution happening in the Dawna Tenasserim Rainforest - some of the most biologically diverse land on the entire planet.

I was reflecting this weekend on what an INCREDIBLE journey it has been scaling Honest Studios for the last 6 years.

From nothing to millions of dollars in revenue and 100,000’s of people impacted all over the world in that time frame is nothing short of a miracle.

We started with no investors, just a team of young hungry talented friends with real trust-based relationships and we have GENERATED consistently good work, meaningful community, tangible impact, major fundraising, captivating stories, sales results, butts in seats and so much more.

I am so proud of what we have built and this year we are looking to scale further. Could your group be one of our next partners?

If your business or organization is in need of strategic support to architect real movement generation solutions hit me up: [email protected]

We have space for a new account going into the spring and summer. 💪🏼

Learn more about our services at honeststudios.com

This poster was not commercially used, the original photo is from the great and was only used as a proof of concept.

#2024