Over the course of the Summer, UnderConsideration headquarters will relocate from Austin, TX, to Bloomington, IN. A few more thoughts about the change below, but first the main reason why I am sharing this: This Thursday, I (Armin) get in a minivan with our two dogs, my desktop computer, a printer, and hard drives with our life’s work and drive to Indiana. Between now and then I have to finish packing and focusing on not losing our minds so there will be no new posts until May 8.
If you are curious about this move:
FPO is powered by UnderConsideration, UnderConsideration is powered by two single human beings, those human beings being me and my wife (and business partner) Bryony. We have two daughters, two dogs, and we do everything we do from home.
One of the keys to doing what we do, which is an unconventional and highly unlikely way of earning an income — an income that is sufficient for a few extravagances like an HBO subscription (I know, living large!) — for two adults, two kids, and two dogs, is to have a low cost of living. When we moved from New York, NY, to Austin, TX, in 2009, we achieved this because New York is ridiculous, we had a single kid (and no dogs), and the value of our Austin house compared to that of our New York semi-shithole was amazing. Over the next 8 years our life has expanded to include an extra kid and canines. Over these same 8 years, the cost of living in Austin has increased, our property taxes are off the roof, and the traffic has become pretty insane. Even the Austin airport, which was super chill is now nearing JFK levels at peak hours. In principle though we still love Austin; it’s a fantastic city but it’s not working for us anymore. We are in no way against Austin and it’s a city like few others, as the year-over-year exponential population growth has demonstrated.
So, why Bloomington? Before we started thinking about a move, we had never heard of Bloomington. A friend of ours from New York, who grew up and now lives there again, recommended it. After some Googling: it is home to Indiana University, one of the top ten biggest and best-est universities in the U.S.; the population is 80,000+ (not counting the 40,000+ transient students); like Austin, it is a college town-slash-blue-bubble-in-a-red-state; it has tremendously good public schools; it is fucking beautiful. Oh, and the houses are twice the size and half the mortgage.
That last bit is super important for us; cutting our monthly costs will allow us to keep this unconventional trajectory and allow us to keep the focus on this blog, the other blogs, the conference, our kids, our dogs — OUR FAMILY — and other projects with less financial burden.
We may lose some “street cred” for being in a tiny, middle-of-the-country town but we choose lifestyle and peace of mind over any external pressure to be in a cool hub. We would rather use the money we save to travel with our kids and have us all experience a little bit of everything than keep paying the high price cities like Austin now demand.
We are half-lucky, half-worked-our-asses-off to do what we do from anywhere in the country so as long as we have an internet connection we will continue doing what we are doing and FPO will keep on keeping on, regardless of location.
Editor of FPO and co-founder of UnderConsideration LLC.
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UnderConsideration is a graphic design firm generating its own projects, initiatives, and content while taking on limited client work. Run by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit in Bloomington, IN. More…
blogs we publish
Brand New / Displaying opinions and focusing solely on corporate and brand identity work.
Art of the Menu / Cataloguing the underrated creativity of menus from around the world.
Quipsologies / Chronicling the most curious, creative, and notable projects, stories, and events of the graphic design industry on a daily basis.
products we sell
Flaunt: Designing effective, compelling and memorable portfolios of creative work.
Brand New Conference videos / Individual, downloadable videos of every presentation since 2010.
Prints / A variety of posters, the majority from our AIforGA series.
Other / Various one-off products.
events we organize
Brand New Conference / A two-day event on corporate and brand identity with some of today's most active and influential practitioners from around the world.
Brand Nieuwe Conference / Ditto but in Amsterdam.
Austin Initiative for Graphic Awesomeness / A speaker series in Austin, TX, featuring some of the graphic design industry's most awesome people.
also
Favorite Things we've Made / In our capacity as graphic designers.
Projects we've Concluded / Long- and short-lived efforts.
UCllc News / Updates on what's going at the corporate level of UnderConsideration.
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