How David Dinh Found Creative Freedom in Freelancing

David Dinh’s career started with a truly ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ experience. David graduated from Conestoga College’s Graphic Design program in 2019 and quickly found work as a junior designer in a print shop. He found the work engaging and he was able to put what he learned in the classroom into real-world projects.

Then a few months later, the world changed and David found himself working remotely and adapting from print to digital design. He didn’t mind the transition, but designing for digital lacks the tactile feeling of print design.

David was looking for a change, but didn’t know where to start. As luck would have it, a few of David’s classmates had participated in the first cohort of the Conestoga Gig Lab program.

“They loved it and recommended it to me, so I applied and was accepted,” he said.

David quickly realized that Gig Lab could help do more than set him up for success as a freelancer.

“My experience with Gig Lab propelled me,” David said. “I went from a junior designer to an art director over the span of the year where I was the sole designer at a smaller agency with full control over everything.”

Even with the career advancement and responsibility, David said he often found himself unfulfilled with the work the agency was doing. David wasn’t alone with those feelings. His partner Nicole Steinberg, a fellow Conestoga Graphic Design alum, also worked remotely and they both felt a need to have more say in the creative process for their respective clients.

“We were both over the corporate dynamic,” he said. 

This was around the same time as a significant event for David and Nicole.

“We got married. We went to Hawaii. We spent some time on the beach just talking about what the future looked like,” David said. “We decided there to start a business together and the two of us have been running Steinh Studio for almost three years now.”

Steinh Studio is a branding and web design company that combines their agency expertise and small-team efficiency to their clients.

“We have complementary skill sets,” he said. “I'm very much web and illustration and she's on the marketing side of things and animation.”

Over the last three years, Steinh Studio has worked on everything from website design to corporate branding to designing labels for consumer products — ones that you might find on the shelf at your local supermarket. 

David said the experience and lessons from Gig Lab set them up for success and they continue to put them into action today. 

“We still think back to discussions we had in the program,” David said. “One of them was about finding a niche. We have never found one, but that’s a good thing. It may seem easier to pick a niche and go all in, but we’d probably find ourselves in the same situation where we'd be tired of doing kind of the same thing over and over.”

As Steinh Studio continues to grow and evolve, David is finding new ways to explore his creative side. He was recently accepted as an apprentice tattoo artist at the Patayin Tattoo Co. in Kitchener. David said the freedom of running their own business has given him the chance to pursue this new skill.

“I know there are people working corporate jobs that are making more money,” he said. “But the whole point is to be happy and chase your dream.”