creating your own space for creativity, play, and passion
The Big Why
Design is not enough without a soul, a vision and a direction.
We’re a husband and wife team that got together in 2002, first working with the art and entertainment industry and thereafter moving into ever-deeper explorations of self-discovery and identity building for our clients.
Over the years, our work has evolved into a fuller process of discovery and toward helping business owners find their amazing unique space in the world so that they can resonate with their best customers and inner circles. What we do is not based on fluffing things up and putting too much icing on the cake. We find authenticity and the deep values within each client and run with them like there’s no mañana.
“things like happiness, creativity, and passion need to be a part of our daily lives”
We believe that every single person is creative and has something amazing to offer the universe. To reach this end, we’ve developed a series of processes and exercises that help our clients uncover the best of themselves, bring everything into focus, polish that brilliance, and help them bring it proudly into the world. It’s a self-discovery process under our consistent and loving guidance.
If you have a dream, it’s the journey what makes any endeavor joyful. Each journey brings us closer to ourselves and then closer to the ones that we want to reach, so the dream can come true. It’s about the realization of what it is that we truly love and finding pieces of our personalities that we didn’t realize we had. Each one of us has something unique, beautiful, and amazing that the world needs.
As we evolve and become closer to our true selves, we have learned that things like happiness, creativity, and passion need to be a part of our daily lives and we’ve learned how important it is to share these values with others.
we believe that every single person is creative and has something to offer the universe
Why So Much Focus on Identity?
Do you ever have the feeling that you know exactly what you want for your business in the back of your mind, yet you don’t know where to start when the time comes to define it?
It’s a logical situation. When it comes to creativity, ideas and feelings tend to conflict with one another.
In our experience, we came to the realization that there was a distinct gap between where clients were when they approached us where they needed to be. They were in the typical catch-22 situation of not knowing what they didn’t know.
Since they didn’t have their brand clearly defined before working with us, they often wouldn’t know what they needed. Or, they needed to get their businesses running or renewed, but didn’t just have a strong forward-facing identity yet to start out with. That’s why we worked out a solution to turn this uncertainty and chaos into direction and clarity.
Our Identity Discovery and Storybook services are our way of guiding our clients through this process and giving them a strong foundation they need to build off-of.
WHY FOCUS ON WOMEN?
women deserve to have the opportunity to do what they love most
We believe that women need extra support putting themselves out in the world, particularly with common challenges they face. They keep communities together, build relationships, and create amazing things that serve the common good. They are the vertebrae which everything rests upon. Women deserve to be seen and heard and have the opportunity to do what they love most.
Few things make us personally happier and gives our own work meaning than seeing women succeed at doing what’s important to them and doing good in the world.
KOLDO & NAOMI’S STORY
Koldo and Naomi met on the internet in 2001, a time when that sort of thing was still uncommon. Koldo lived in Madrid, Spain and Naomi was going to the university in Idaho.
Koldo is an artist who had been always involved in art and multi-creative projects. At the time he ran a popular music entertainment site that Naomi visited often and they began collaborating on it together. They soon realized how much they had in common, even with their cultural differences and the physical space between them. They felt so much at home with one another that they began chatting up to nine hours a day and sleeping only four hours a night!
It quickly became apparent that their friendship had evolved into something more and Naomi moved to Spain to live and work with Koldo. Since then, they’ve ran three different creativity oriented businesses and collaborated on hundreds of projects together.
The Timeline
1980's
The First Years
Koldo begins working at his first job in a design studio in Madrid, cutting out letter with an exacto knife and drawing with Rotring pens. He also organizes his first artistic public exhibitions.
2000's
October 2001
After meeting online, Naomi starts collaborating on Koldo’s popular online entertainment portal, Intuitive Music.
January 2002
Naomi moves from the U.S. to Spain to live and work with Koldo.
February 2003
Koldo and Naomi start Intuitive Designs, a boutique design studio. They make creative things for clubs and people in the entertainment industry.
February 2006
Koldo and Naomi get married. For their honeymoon, they go on a tour of a cave with pre-historic paintings.
September 2008
Koldo and Naomi move from Spain to the Pacific Northwest. It’s very green there.
2010's
December 2011
Intuitive Designs starts to merge into ShiftFWD. Koldo and Naomi identify with the forward-thinking and expansive nature that the new name gives their business.
December 2012
Koldo and Naomi shift their focus deeper into branding, storytelling, and helping people connect more meaninfully with best customers.
July 2013
Koldo and Naomi start Epokka as a side-project to focus on creativity and introspection.
2014
ShiftFWD develops an approach to help people dig even deeper into finding their story, how to portray their offerings, and tie their identity, presence, and culture together as one.
amazing at finding the best in people
ABOUT KOLDO, IN NAOMI’S WORDS
Koldo is amazing at finding the best in people. He quickly “sees” a person and what makes them beautiful and unique. Then he comes up with insanely creative and imaginative ways to help people be their best selves. He makes the process fun and helps motivate people intrinsically. It’s like he has a special tool to access the inner child inside and give it a voice and freedom to expressive itself.
I often call Koldo “the idea machine” because he’s constantly thinking of new creative projects and fun things to try. You know when you look at some people and you can just see the wheels spinning? That’s how Koldo looks the majority of the time.
On a more personal note, Koldo is the best partner I could ever hope for. Her continually supports my personal growth and is warm, intensely creative, strong-willed, and empathetic. I am grateful I get to share this life and work with him.
we love our work and we enjoy living it with passion.
ABOUT NAOMI, IN KOLDO’S WORDS
Ever since I met Naomi, I fell in love with her heart full of empathy and love. She’s got a natural born talent to listen to other people’s problems and always tries to help find solutions and give helpful guidance. She really cares about people. I believe this makes her a wonderful partner.
I understand that, to other people, it can be annoying to have your partner talking compulsively in the middle of the night or a dinner, or a holiday break, about her new ideas for a client. That’s Naomi! And I love it. We do love our work and we enjoy living it with passion. When your work depends on creativity and inspiration you cannot switch off, it’s always there wherever you are. That makes our lives exciting!
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