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Our Living Design Studio (OLDS) was co-founded by Aliko Weste and Rachel Taylor, and has since expanded to include 6 incredible team members with specialized skills to support your journey through our process.
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The OLDS team draws on over thirty years of combined experience in graphic design, business development, and project management to provide accessible, equitable, and empowering tools for small businesses, thought leaders, and creatives in our communities. OLDS originated in 2018 as Well 'n Green, evolved into U Productions, and has since blossomed into Our Living Design Studio.
Our Living Design Studio (OLDS) is a digital design firm based in Seattle, Washington, on Coast Salish Lands. We create impactful designs that inspire and support social-purpose businesses and individuals. Guided by a vision of fostering a global movement of thriving, purpose-driven enterprises, we aim to steward the great turning one brand, one tagline and one website at a time.
OUR ROOTS
How we do
Business
How can we be like nature, orienting towards regenerative cycles instead of bending to the urgent and extractive patterns that drive our dominant culture?
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How do we actively embody right relationship with ourselves, our work, and the more-than-human world in our business?
Driven by a dedication to remember and honor our earth-based cycles and procedures, we conduct our work with integrity and respect for the well-being of people and the planet.
We do business like Nature.
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Drawing from years of studying and reconnecting with indigenous values and nature based cycles and principles we strive to embody the following four values in our business and in our work with clients.
Some of these values specifically draw on the teachings that Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez, PhD share in Restoring the Kinship Worldview.
1. Move at the pace of nature
OLDS embraces the understanding that nature moves at the speed of life, unlike capitalism. Our most successful clients trust the innate wisdom of their nervous systems and move at a pace aligned with their well-being and the rhythms of the more-than-human world. By honoring the natural flow of life, we promote sustainability, balance, and long-term success.
2. Self-Care
When we are well, everything around us is well. We prioritize self-care practices that promote holistic physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Through our coaching, we guide our clients in establishing their own structures and routines to prioritize self-care, empowering them to show up as their best selves in all areas of life, including their business.
3. Courage + Trust
We understand that true growth and change often require us to step outside our comfort zones and venture into the unknown. Inspired by the quote "Even if it feels like you're jumping off a cliff, what's on the other side is remarkable" [Restoring the Kinship Worldview], we encourage our clients to embrace courage as a catalyst for personal and professional development, trusting that what's on the other side is the version of themselves they've always longed for.
4. Heart Wisdom
At OLDS, we recognize that true guidance lies within, so we guide our clients to tap into their intuition and heart's wisdom in growing their business. The Coast Salish people here in Seattle, WA have a word for this - 'Hatchusita' - the intellect of the heart. By incorporating heart wisdom into our coaching, we support individuals in aligning their actions with their truest intentions.
THE TEAM
Aliko is the founder and director of Our Living Design Studio. Born and raised in Seattle Washington to a French Jewish mother and Caribbean father, Aliko is a first generation American, trans, Blaxk presenting, bilingual, Jewish entrepreneur and producer. Aliko is the Founder and director of Our Living Design Studio, U Productions, Expansion Festival, and Good for Chocolate. He is a coach, designer, speaker, and writer. Through all of his businesses, events, expertise and hobbies, he is able to live out his dedication to carving out space for humanity through his work.
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Alexa Lux supports OLDS as a digital designer and internal systems developer helping the team manage, track, and complete client projects. A queer animist artist & social entrepreneur descended from peoples of the waters of western Europe, she tends to the generative intersections of digital design, music, & community organization in the occupied ancestral territories of the Clackamas & Cascades peoples outside Portland, OR. Guided by principles grounded in postactivism, systems thinking, & relational ecology, she utilizes a wide array of artistic & professional skills in service of creative initiatives that cultivate resilient communities and tend to the cracks of our times.
Max Rose Zimberg (they/she/z) is a visionary systems designer and community weaver dedicated to cultural transformation toward a radically just, connected, and caring world. At Columbia University, they explored questions of our unknowable evolutionary past and our imagined regenerative futures through natural and biological sciences, design, and critical theory. Max developed a passion for sustainable food systems as a vital leverage point in our Great Turning, learning to navigate complexity and foster multi-stakeholder collaboration from permaculture farms to city halls.
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Over the past decade, Max Rose has co-founded several sustainability organizations, led global movement-building efforts and local policy initiatives, and cultivated tools for nature-inspired systems strategy and trauma-healing facilitation. At OLDS, Max guides individuals in unearthing the soul wisdom and values behind their business ideas, collaboratively transforming this essence into compelling brand narratives and effective strategies.
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Max finds deep joy in cultivating community around natural beauty, creativity, nourishment, (r)evolution, vulnerability, and play. Z can often be found dancing, hiking and skiing big mountains, cooking and wildcrafting, thrifting and styling friends and spaces, and practicing self-compassion and emotional alchemy through yoga, writing, ritual, art, and sweetly tending chronic pain. Originally from New York City and imperfectly trilingual in English, Spanish, and Hebrew, Max now lives in the lichen-licked forests of Kalapuya Ilihi, Eugene, OR, where they have embraced a fourth language: communing with the beings of this miraculous ecosystem.
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Indigo Wind is a visionary artist, illustrator and multidisciplinary creative with a deepening connection to her Scandinavian ancestry and the lands with which she lives. Born on the south shore of Gichigame (Lake Superior), originally from Anishinaabe land, she now walks the beauty way primarily among the Cascade Foothills in the Pacific North West, along the Santiam River on Central Kalapuyan land.
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As an Earth lover, intuitive artist, writer, and beauty activist, she draws inspiration from Mother Nature’s abundant well-spring of resilient magnificence, weaving this potency into her role as a community tender, full-time designer and devotee to ART as a way of BEING. Her work is in deep co-creation with the animate world, the spirit of creativity and eco-tones where form and formless come together as one.
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Tad (he/him) is a digital advertising and programmatic media pioneer with a passion for helping sole proprietors, small businesses, and non-profits create effective and manageable brand strategies. Since 2018, he has created and led communities of small business owners in orchestrated, grassroots marketing and fundraising campaigns for non-profits such as Meals on Wheels, The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Josh Gibson Foundation, and Buck Leonard Association for Sports & Human Enrichment. Tad and his wife Karen Fassio are co-founders of Abundant Marketing Collective.
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Pavielle Goldman is a seasoned product marketer with over a decade of experience driving growth and impact for Fortune 100 companies like Allstate Insurance and fast-growing startups such as DoorDash and Artsy. Her expertise lies in crafting strategies that connect brands with their audiences through compelling storytelling and innovative campaigns.
As a marketing consultant and copywriter, Pavielle brings a unique blend of creative and analytical skills to the table, helping businesses elevate their messaging, refine their positioning, and achieve measurable results. Whether it's launching a new product, building brand awareness, or developing copy that converts, Pavielle approaches every project with a commitment to excellence and a collaborative spirit.
Outside of work, Pavielle is an adventure seeker who loves to travel, enjoys live music, and curates wellness experiences for others.
Pauline is a Marketing, Strategic Partnerships and Visual Communications Expert with a decade of experience across industries developing marketing strategies, events planning,
digital marketing and client management. She is highly skilled in developing brand
management strategies, creative design and conducting market research to fuel business growth. She is a certified marketer from the Chartered Institute of Marketing
(CIM) and a graduate of Moi University located in Kenya, with a Bachelor of
Science Degree in Graphic Communication and Advertising.
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Rachel is a graphic designer, brand builder, and art director with 5 years experience crafting dreams from the ground up. Having spent 2 years in the thick of the advertising world, Rachel is excited to share creative strategies that make successes while finalizing her degree of Design at Seattle University. Proudly supported by creative directors across the U.S., Rachel is loving her new mode of life, bringing light to small businesses and reconnecting with her own roots in the Pacific Northwest.
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We dedicate 1% of all profits to The Nature Conservancy, supporting their vital efforts to combat climate change and protect biodiversity.