I never used to have a thing for hearts, but for some reason, over the course of my career and here at Dennehey Design, they just kept showing up!
The first meaningful time hearts showed up in my life was the year I started dating Bonnie. I gave her a Valentine’s card that I made with her name spelled with a heart-shaped B. It wasn’t a huge thing, but I thought it was pretty clever—she wasn’t very impressed. So, I guess my first heart was a flop.
A few years later, I was working as a graphic designer at an agency in Dallas, and we picked up the American Heart Association as a client to promote Heart Month. My team and I spent countless hours designing branding and ads with lots of hearts and bright red.
Fast forward to 2010, I was working on the marketing team at UT Southwestern Medical Center and was assigned a project for Heart Month again. I enjoyed making this one because I painted it by hand, and one side of the heart was warmly colored with romantic words about love and affection. The other side was made up of words about heart health and medicine with cool hues.
Next, my career path landed me as the Creative Director at Gateway Church, where we stumbled upon a few heart-related projects; the first was a series about worship that Pastor Robert preached called “Love Expressed”. The creative team and I painted several large hearts on canvases and then we assembled them together as one heart mosaic—one of my favorites.
Then, in 2017, my last year at Gateway, I collaborated with my Creative peers on the Gateway creative team to develop an Easter campaign called “Love is Here.” The campaign told a story of love, community, and acceptance—it welcomed people to visit Gateway Church for Easter Weekend.
The next place my career adventure led me was to the marketing team at Seed Company, a non-profit organization that funds and facilitates Bible Translation. The goal of Seed Company is for the Bible to be translated into every language so everyone can experience God’s Word in their heart language—the language their mother taught them—the language they understand best. We didn’t do much work with heart images at Seed, but there was a lot of heart talk and heart messaging.
Finally, in 2020, when Bonnie and I decided to go all in on our little business, I thought hearts were finally in my past! It was a woodworking business, after all—definitely not a soft or sentimental profession.
Well, I made it one year before Bonnie suggested we make hearts for Valentine’s Day, and our business (and lives) were forever changed. Read our heart story. I’m not sure what God is doing with this heart thing, but after making thousands of Handmade Wooden Hearts and exploring more and more Engraved Hearts, we’re leaning into the trend. It’s obvious that our customers love hearts!
Because we see the demand, and we truly love making meaningful art, we’ve been busy expanding our “heartwork” and building a collection of original art and artwork reproductions to celebrate love and its ever-popular symbol—the heart ❤️
The first meaningful time hearts showed up in my life was the year I started dating Bonnie. I gave her a Valentine’s card that I made with her name spelled with a heart-shaped B. It wasn’t a huge thing, but I thought it was pretty clever—she wasn’t very impressed. So, I guess my first heart was a flop.
A few years later, I was working as a graphic designer at an agency in Dallas, and we picked up the American Heart Association as a client to promote Heart Month. My team and I spent countless hours designing branding and ads with lots of hearts and bright red.
Fast forward to 2010, I was working on the marketing team at UT Southwestern Medical Center and was assigned a project for Heart Month again. I enjoyed making this one because I painted it by hand, and one side of the heart was warmly colored with romantic words about love and affection. The other side was made up of words about heart health and medicine with cool hues.
Next, my career path landed me as the Creative Director at Gateway Church, where we stumbled upon a few heart-related projects; the first was a series about worship that Pastor Robert preached called “Love Expressed”. The creative team and I painted several large hearts on canvases and then we assembled them together as one heart mosaic—one of my favorites.
Then, in 2017, my last year at Gateway, I collaborated with my Creative peers on the Gateway creative team to develop an Easter campaign called “Love is Here.” The campaign told a story of love, community, and acceptance—it welcomed people to visit Gateway Church for Easter Weekend.
The next place my career adventure led me was to the marketing team at Seed Company, a non-profit organization that funds and facilitates Bible Translation. The goal of Seed Company is for the Bible to be translated into every language so everyone can experience God’s Word in their heart language—the language their mother taught them—the language they understand best. We didn’t do much work with heart images at Seed, but there was a lot of heart talk and heart messaging.
Finally, in 2020, when Bonnie and I decided to go all in on our little business, I thought hearts were finally in my past! It was a woodworking business, after all—definitely not a soft or sentimental profession.
Well, I made it one year before Bonnie suggested we make hearts for Valentine’s Day, and our business (and lives) were forever changed. Read our heart story. I’m not sure what God is doing with this heart thing, but after making thousands of Handmade Wooden Hearts and exploring more and more Engraved Hearts, we’re leaning into the trend. It’s obvious that our customers love hearts!
Because we see the demand, and we truly love making meaningful art, we’ve been busy expanding our “heartwork” and building a collection of original art and artwork reproductions to celebrate love and its ever-popular symbol—the heart ❤️
