One of my favorite businesses in Tacoma is The Co-Lab and the Pod Family of Businesses— Tacoma Children’s School, The Pod Works, and The Co-Lab. They’re all businesses aimed at supporting families and parents in Tacoma through childcare, education, and co-working spaces. My son, Jack, attended preschool at Tacoma Children’s School, and has spent countless hours playing at The Co-Lab while I was able to head off and run errands or do work.
When The Co-Lab opened, they did a ton of renovation work to the interior, but the exterior maintained it’s unassuming light greyish blue paint job— not really giving much of an indication of what was inside. When Natasha and Kayla approached me about doing a mural on the exterior of The Co-Lab I was thrilled. Not only because it would be an incredibly fun project to undertake, but I loved the idea of giving the outside of the building a look that would hint at the vibrant, fun, creative space that existed inside those four walls.
I started the process by brainstorming and mocking up a few different designs for mural options. We wanted to go with a colorful vibe that felt playful, but wasn’t super basic primary-colors. The Co-Lab branding already utilized a somewhat more muted but colorful color scheme, so that was our launching point. Being able to create something fun and playful really meant the world was my oyster when it came to designing, but in the end we went for a circle-based overlapping color block design, which I loved.
The install process for this mural was done by drawing it all out using a pencil., string, and level to draw out all the shapes, then it was just a matter of filling in all the colors. You can watch it come to life in the reels below!
Honestly, I feel like more classic craftsman houses should have fun, graphic murals on the exterior. So many commercial spaces with big flat concrete walls get murals, but I love how this mural looks tucked in among all the architectural elements of this pretty classically Tacoma house.
Jack doesn’t go to The Co-Lab anymore now that he’s a bit older, but I still get to visit this mural every time I drop off a batch of orders at the post office across the street! It’s still one of my favorite projects.
