Meet Rosie Kosinski of Shattered Pencil Studios

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rosie Kosinski.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born in England to Irish and Polish parents as the youngest of 3 girls. When I was 11 months old, my family drove from England (via ferry) to Europe, Cyprus, and finally to the intended destination, Israel/Palestine. In this land of many cultures, I took my first steps. At a very early age, I had a sense that our circumstances were different.

We hadn’t moved there for purely religious reasons, though there was an element of that as Christians. Nor were my parents journalists or diplomats; there were many in our circle of ex-pats over time. My father was a watercolor painter with a background in architecture, who had always had a penchant to explore the other side of any given horizon.

My mother, who had trained as a nurse, worked in the diamond center before setting up her jewelry boutique. We often traveled, and at some point, I yo-yoed between the Middle East and the United States. As an outsider in all these lands, with a visa that needed constant renewal, I was a perpetual observer.

My one constant was schoolwork, and I became an avid student and reader. Moving as frequently as we did, I wasn’t part of sports or clubs, and a sense of community was a foreign concept. During one assembly in Middle School in Jerusalem, every kid in my class got to stand up and tell the school where they were from. This was an international school, so my peers were from Finland, Germany, Kenya, and India… when I got up, I said “Earth.” It seemed the most accurate.

I relished trips with my father, from the deserts of Jordan to the sunsets of New Mexico, gathering photos that would become stunning paintings. My mother’s shop in Jerusalem was a place where people from every corner of the world would come and savor her hospitality, in a fragrant setting resonant with Enya and Sarah Mclachlan.

As I helped dust the shelves, she would tell me that she would only sell jewelry she would wear and artwork she would display in her own home. She didn’t sell “stuff.” I admired how she brought people together, listened to their stories, and added joy to their lives through her personality and collections. I lived in a world where sincerity and beauty were more important than wealth, success, and material belongings.

Fast-forward to a divorce, and multiple moves to and from the US and Israel/Palestine. Graduations and a gap year in which I traveled around Australia and Europe. Attending Davidson College in North Carolina, where I soaked up the liberal arts opportunity to study art while devouring the sciences, philosophies, and psychologies that I found so fascinating.

Majoring in Art, I traded my perfect grades for a B when I decided to sell my artwork during my Senior show. My crime was “commodifying art.” I wasn’t interested in being a starving artist. Been there, done that, got the uncertain childhood. Zip through time again, a brief stint in San Francisco and a permanent move to New Jersey with my now-husband. I worked as a gallery director in NYC, where I quickly learned my mother’s philosophy did not exist.

On my first day, the gallery owner showed me the work I would be selling – old Dutch masterpieces – and I paused to admire a captivating triptych. The owner floated over to me with glasses teetering on the tip of her nose, looked at the paintings, and laughed. “Hideous f***ing things, aren’t they? But they’re going to be our money-makers this season, at $350k a piece.” My heart sank. This world was not about beauty at all. This was the investment world.

Although I had the sense to bring business into my art in college, I wasn’t willing to strip art of the soul. I turned my attention to the graphic design world, where I could work with living stories. I hesitantly climbed the ladder as a creative director. As the years unfolded, I elbowed out of the camped, limited corporate world, following my entrepreneurial spirit – the same spirit my mother, father, and two sisters had followed before me.

I founded Shattered Pencil Studios, where I cultivated my meandering experiences and talents. To this day, my business allows me to observe, reflect, create and repeat, a process aimed to bring growth joyfully to me and my clients. I combine creativity with business-forward solutions. I harness my interest in a variety of fields to learn about the industries my clients represent, and bring their vision to life through visual language.

My nomadic upbringing resulted in a universal and intuitive understanding of the raw human experience right below the layers of cultures and perspectives. Through my work as the Brand Queen, I tap into the unfiltered story that connects my clients to their customers, and I make that story available, pulp and all.

Although I never felt belonging in one given community, nor in one particular industry, I have fostered a global community. These meaningful connections thread together the strewn pearls of my experiences, resulting in a unique pearl necklace and the story I gladly wear and display.

Three factors shape my story: 1) Being a Third Culture Kid, 2) Having been raised by Entrepreneurs, and 3) A deep, innate Curiosity with a capital C.

For anyone unfamiliar with Third Culture Kids, we are people raised in cultures different from our parents, and in places foreign to our nationality. Having experienced a nomadic upbringing, I find belonging everywhere and nowhere at once. This has shaped my path by providing me with a broad global perspective.

However, it can feel like a lonely journey without a solid community, and becoming a solopreneur seemed to have been the inevitable outcome when looking at the patterns along my path. Both my parents were business owners, my father was an architect turned full-time artist, and my mother was a nurse turned boutique store owner.

Despite the grave challenges that came with sustaining a family through often tenuous means of income, I observed and absorbed the deeper vibrancy that comes with running your show. When I “did time” in various corporate positions, I felt stifled by the parameters within which I had to remain. Of course, after years of operating the branding boutique, Shattered Pencil Studios, limits and niches are important. But they are much more palatable when they are self-imposed.

Finally, my curiosity is subject-agnostic. Having pursued a liberal arts education at Davidson College in North Carolina, I desired to find a use for my love and interest for creativity, writing, psychology, biology… well, everything except for war-centric history. Fast-forward to working with a variety of clients, I can sink my creative and strategic teeth into industries ranging from law, wellness, finance, biotech… the list goes on.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road has not been smooth, but then again I took the footpath, so I never expected it to be otherwise. Circumstantially, there have been various pebbles, tree roots, and thick brush in the form of limited resources, blind spots, and out-of-reach networks. However, the real struggle along the way has been Head Trash. Landfills-full of head trash. I could share stories of panic about making rent, supporting my husband as he started his business as well, and trying to visit parents and siblings living across every sea.

I could also psychoanalyze my feelings of restlessness rooted in my nomadic genes, or the constant stream of guilt — “I should just be grateful to have any work, doesn’t matter what kind of work.” Ultimately, the most difficult challenges arose not through circumstance alone, but from succumbing to negative self-talk and allowing fear to determine my pace and my actions.

As you know, we’re big fans of Shattered Pencil Studios. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Shattered Pencil Studios is a boutique brand design & development agency. We help businesses clarify and convey their vision to the people they serve. Our collaborative process is at once creative and pragmatic. We help our clients shut out the noise of the “shoulds”, “trends”, and “data” that may be obscuring their vision as poorly as their blind spots.

In this space, we help develop brand messaging and identities, logos and websites, as well as overall communication that strikes a chord with their best client. There are tons of brand and marketing agencies out there. So what makes this one different? Have you ever stopped asking someone for directions on the street? Have any of them been so enthusiastic to help and instead of just pointing vaguely, they draw a map or even walk you part of the way? That’s us.

We love guiding people to where they need to go, whether or not that destination involves our services. Should a client require branding or marketing designs, we do everything in our power to make that journey fruitful and enjoyable. We strive to deliver results through our designs and our trusted partners to provide long-lasting and sustainable brands.

We all have different ways of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
For me, success is synonymous with health. If I am doing everything in my power to maintain and improve the health of my mind, body, relationships, family, and business then I am successful. With this mindset, success is a moment-by-moment decision, completely and freely within my grasp. And yours!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shatteredpencil.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shatteredpencilstudios/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shatteredpencilstudios