Meet Rachel Platner of Woven Co. Studio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Platner.

Hi Rachel, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in a household that really valued creativity, spending my childhood dabbling in everything from clay to collage to photography. In college in DC, I started a lifestyle magazine with a group of friends and dubbed myself creative director — what I’d hoped would become a self-fulfilling prophecy — doing all the photography and layout design while coordinating an editorial team and keeping a finger on the pulse of culture to seek out stories students would resonate with. Bringing a project into the world with so much heart and intention and receiving real-time feedback that really resonated with the community lit a spark in me. It opened my eyes to the possibility of creating a career that encompassed all the things I loved: visual design, storytelling, and connection.

Like many creatives, I found my way into advertising, working as a designer and art director while keeping personal projects alive on the side. During the pandemic, I discovered weaving – a meditative, tactile creative outlet that let me tune out the noise, make something with my hands, and practice presence. I fell in love with it as an intuitive, forgiving medium with endless possibility.

I continued to explore my personal weaving practice over the next few years, making pieces for myself and for friends and family. Then in 2023, empowered by the momentum I’d built in my personal artistic practice as well as my career, I took the leap to freelance as a creative director and art director full-time. My approach to each started to inform the other in a really beautiful way, and I felt the pull to shape my business around my values of empathy, collaboration, and intuition, offering both creative direction for brands and agencies as well as inviting others to explore a hands-on creative practice of their own through creative workshops.

I started offering weaving workshops to small groups and corporate teams, and it’s been incredibly fulfilling to facilitate people discovering their own creative process through this ancient craft. Seeing that lightbulb moment when a technique “clicks” or a student gets really into the flow has been so gratifying, and I feel honored to be one gateway to discovering the many rewards building a creative practice can bring to your life. Creating space for people to feel seen and to connect with each other in a low-stakes, playful way feels essential to who I am as a person, and I’m excited to continue bringing this mission to life through workshops, events, and community building.

The through-line in everything I do, whether facilitating workshops, doing creative direction for brands, or exploring my personal artistic practice, is about bringing disparate elements together into something cohesive, meaningful, and human, creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts. In a time when so many of us can feel isolated and disconnected, I’m focused on building spaces for connection through creativity, using self-discovery through art as a means of bolstering social health.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Of course, all creative journeys have their ups and downs, but something that’s brought me a lot of reassurance is that today, no career grows in a purely linear fashion. Riding the waves is all a part of the process, and it’s empowering to get to define what success looks like on my own terms. A big mental hurdle for me was the perceived financial instability when I first started freelancing – I made some changes to reduce my living expenses to pursue this path, and while that felt like a hit to my ego at the time, I had to remind myself that these sacrifices enabled me to take steps toward building the life of my dreams. It took a while to recalibrate from an employee mindset to that of a business owner with agency over how I choose to spend my time and energy.

I also struggled to create structure for myself after becoming self-employed. Decision paralysis is real when you’re your own boss with a million ideas, and it can feel like the sky’s the limit every day. Creating systems that work for my brain and intentionally building community – both locally and online – that keep me accountable to my goals has been invaluable. With so much I want to accomplish, it’s been helpful to visualize the various elements of my career and life as pieces of a pie – different pieces fuel different needs and values, but together they add up to something fulfilling. I’ve learned not to let any one piece define my value, and embracing my multidimensionality feels like unlocking a superpower that was there all along.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Woven Co. Studio (WoCo for short) specializes in creative direction for purpose-driven brands and facilitating weaving workshops that encourage people to tap into their creativity and sense of play.

On the creative direction side, I work with brands, agencies, and small businesses on everything from campaign creative and art direction to branding, pitch decks, and on-set direction for photo and video shoots. My approach is driven by empathy and collaboration – I love supporting in-house teams and founders with strategic creative that feels human and makes audiences feel seen.

On the workshop side, I facilitate hands-on weaving experiences for small groups and corporate teams – everything from paper weaving and fluffy cloud weaving to fringe weaving and intro to tapestry. Each workshop is designed to be accessible, playful, and low-stakes. They’ve become great team-building experiences for companies looking to get their teams off screens and into a creative flow state together. There’s something powerful about creating space for people to slow down, work with their hands, and connect through making something tangible. I host public workshops at local shops and art centers, and it’s been immensely fulfilling to plug into my local creative community, welcome people into a new creative outlet and see what they discover about themselves in the process.

What I’m most proud of is the community I’ve built, not as an abstract concept, but as real relationships with clients, collaborators, and students who share this vision. Whether I’m concepting a brand campaign or watching someone discover weaving for the first time, it’s all about following the thread of curiosity to see where it leads.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
For most of my life, I would have considered myself a fairly risk-averse person, rarely challenging the status quo. But during the pandemic, I experienced the reckoning that many people did, re-evaluating what mattered most and questioning whether work should be the center of my identity. I sat with these questions for a while, and eventually started working with a fantastic career coach who helped me to envision how I could create a life and career that aligned with what I wanted for myself. Identifying my values and realizing I could take small, incremental steps towards that life, rather than a giant leap, made the risks of stepping into the unknown feel like a strategic choice. I shifted my mindset around risk with the belief that I am a person who figures things out (which I have plenty of evidence for!), which made taking the next step feel more expansive and full of potential rather than scary.

I embodied an “everything is an experiment” mindset, and tweaked variables with each new project and offering. Looking at risk-taking as fine-tuning dials and operating a business as a constant feedback loop allows me to feel in control, and I continue to adapt and iterate based on my learnings. I’ve also come to relate to failure as just information, another data point to learn from, rather than a moral failing. On days it feels particularly tough, I remind myself that I feel much closer to living the life I envisioned than ever before, full of creatively fulfilling work, time spent with loved ones, and travel. For me, risk taking has been an exercise in trusting myself. I know I can always pivot, and I’ve got all the tools I need to figure it out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wovenco.studio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wovenco.studio/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-platner
• Other: https://www.repcreative.studio/