Meet Ehsaan Mesghali of Mesghali Studio in Culver City

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ehsaan Mesghali.

Ehsaan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My story in LA pretty much starts from birth. My parents immigrated to the states from Iran in the late 70’s / early 80’s and settled in Culver City. Growing up, I excelled academically but I always had the most fun drawing and painting, that eventually led me towards two degrees in architecture and a career in creative direction.

Towards the end of high school and early in college, I began getting involved pretty heavily with digital design in a self-taught capacity and started offering services to people in my network and word of mouth.

I formalized my business after college and applied to grad school so I could pursue a career in academia parallel to my design practice. After I graduated, I worked at a few different firms and began teaching design part-time.

Eventually one of the firms I was working at had a major unraveling at the top and the office was unexpectedly dissolved. Luckily I always maintained my own clients on the side, so I used the opportunity to focus fully on my own studio and started using my free time on personal design experiments surrounding themes that intrigued me the most, things like stencils, color, pattern and type.

Since then, I balance my time between creative support for my clients, teaching architecture and design, and exploring my own art through partnerships and collaborations with other brands and creatives.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has definitely not always been a smooth rode. Working on your own has its ups and downs, especially because you could close a few really good clients and be on track towards doing very well, then hit a stretch where you can’t close anything, or projects fall through while bills continue to pile up. It’s always feast or famine. You can’t always tell when you’re in position to expand and grow or save for a rainy day. After ten years, I’m starting to get a hang of it.

Growing a larger company requires adding additional talent. With added talent, you need someone to actively manage them or else the work doesn’t live up to expected standards. Part of the problem of getting very good at something is finding people just as good as you, so you can continue to build and grow. People who are good are also very expensive.

Over the past five or so years, I began developing my own design experiments internally and that’s required a fair amount of personal investment both in the form of time and finances. I’m happy to see the project pick up speed and traction, but it did not happen overnight and required a fair amount of patience (and help from people I’m forever in debt to).

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Mesghali Studio – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
My business is creative solutions across the full spectrum of available touchpoints between a brand and their consumers. Most of the time, that includes strategy, graphics, branding, illustration and digital content. Sometimes it involves printing solutions or custom apparel, other times a website, app or online experience. In more recent cases due to my architectural background it involves construction, fabrication and installation. People usually come to me because they want to develop a visually identity that runs through all of these touchpoints in harmony.

Since I have half my business grounded in branding and marketing and the other half in my training as an architect, a lot of my clients are brands or agencies that need someone at the helm who fully understands both of these worlds.

Examples of these clients might be sportswear brands like Nike or Puma who need full retail interiors or event design that requires an understanding of space planning and furniture design while also understanding the specifications on large format printing and how to properly send and prepare digital files for vendors.

It’s really about being in charge of an orchestra of professionals and knowing enough about each of their professions to have a meaningful conversation about their role in bringing the creative vision to life.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I hope to continue growing my list of clients and helping them achieve their goals by whatever measure of success they have defined for themselves.

I’d like to continue developing my personal art and see where it can go. I have a few partnerships and collaborations in the works that are very exciting and hold some promise.

I’ve started to settle on a great team of professionals I tap into remotely that I can trust and we’re continuing to hone our skills and execution.

My future is becoming a household name in design and taking my ideas as far as they can go, that journey has already started.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mesghali.studio
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emesghali/, https://www.instagram.com/mesghali.studio/
• Other: Custom painted Puma basketball for Kyle Kuzma of the Los Angeles Lakers:
  https://www.instagram.com/p/B9ryeAHBEVp/
• It was also hosted on the official puma basketball page:
  https://www.instagram.com/p/B_IQdNxDOob/

Image Credit:
The pictures are of @indianteddybear @ome and @frenchmontana with my artwork.

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