About the founder and designer ...let's meet Jennifer Gentile-Bruno.
Prior to starting Boulevard Designs, I worked in Corporate Finance for nearly 20 years. A career in the corporate world was never my intention; I graduated college with a degree in Communications, driven to be a theatrical Stage Manager. However, after bouncing around the entertainment industry freelancing in production for soap operas and Broadway, I realized that I craved stability and a steady paycheck, and headed towards the corporate life.
Creativity never left my being and I found many ways in my personal life to incorporate a crafty side, even on the
corporate path. While producing financial presentations, I picked up incredible digital artistic skills that inspired
me creatively. I’ve always believed that every path we take is purposeful and we gain things from those paths that we end up using as we move on to our next chapter.
I left the corporate life three weeks before my wedding in 2015. Knowing it was time for a change, and also because I wanted to be home in time to have dinner with my new Groom, I made the decision to leave Finance and ponder something new. Additionally, I now had the flexibility and the support to think about working at something that I was truly passionate about, and not just about paying the mortgage and the bills.
Planning a wedding truly paved the path for my career change. I had a great time creating all of the event materials; the Save the Date card, the menu, the ceremony program, and my invitations (I truly drove the invitation company that I used crazy with my own input and ideas). What I learned though with the various templates to create such things, there was always something that I wanted to change or alter to make it more personal and more my own. I felt this frustration more so after the wedding when I received my digital photo prints from
the photographer and wanted to work on collages, albums, photo gifts and such. I continued to feel that the templates provided online lacked the personal touch, and I was constantly frustrated with the limitations of such templates. I wanted to add my own special style; backgrounds of things that meant
something to me, my favorite fonts, and so forth. So, I stopped using the templates and used those artistic skills that I picked up from mountains of financial presentation work and applied them creatively to my projects.
Before I knew it, I was creating all kinds of things. What started with some fun wedding prep and photo design, led to additional projects. My husband owns a production company, so I started with re-working his logo and brand, moving on to create new business cards and then designing various marketing materials for him. No longer did our holiday cards come from online templates, but instead from the designs that I personally created. Once I started to share some of my work, I noticed an interest from friends and family, and I began to create for them. For the first time in my life I was focusing on and pursuing something that I truly loved instead of walking through a career that never truly inspired me.
With this newfound zest, I had an incredible drive to take my love for design to the next level,
and in the fall of 2017,
Boulevard Designs was born.
About Boulevard Designs...