If you’ve ever posed in front of a colorful mural on the streets of San Diego for that perfect, Insta-worthy pic, you can likely thank Phoebe Cornog and Roxy Prima for the eye-catching backdrop.
Phoebe and Roxy are friends and business partners who co-founded and serve as creative directors of Pandr Design Co., a branding and design business that creates splashy murals for major companies like Target, Visa and Bumble. Phoebe and Roxy also started Ladies Who Paint, a nonprofit aimed at empowering women in the arts. As if they aren’t busy enough, the duo also cohost a podcast, Drunk on Lettering, that focuses on all things design.
Instagram has played a big role in both of their careers. In fact, like many great partnerships, Instagram is the place where the two originally met – and the rest, as they both say, is history.
Before we get into your career, give us your life story.
Phoebe: I grew up in Philly. Moved out to San Diego six years ago, after graduating from art school. I always knew I wanted to do something creative and that I wanted to live in California, so I made it happen! I worked for a couple of bike companies and then eventually met Roxy and the rest is history.
Roxy: I am a rare native to San Diego. I’ve always had an independent spirit and knew I wouldn’t take a conventional path in life. In college, I couldn’t find my place or figure out what I wanted to do. I took every kind of class, but nothing sparked my ion. I finally dropped out and started taking classes at a community college, until I took a graphic design class and it all clicked. After working a boring design job after college, I took to Instagram and that’s where I met Phoebe.
Tell us about your professional partnership. You originally met on Instagram?
Roxy: Phoebe and I met through Instagram back in 2015. She found me on Instagram and saw that I was a lettering enthusiast in San Diego as well. We met up for drinks and chatted about lettering and decided to start a lettering club together.
We hosted monthly, free events around San Diego that brought creatives together to build a community. Not long after starting the club, we found that we worked really well together. We decided to collaborate on products and a couple freelance projects.
It didn’t take long for us both to quit our full-time design jobs and start Pandr Design Co. together!
What is Pandr Design Co.?
Phoebe: Pandr is our business and we focus on creating custom murals for businesses. However, we also do branding, packaging, social media graphics — you name it, we can design it!
Favorite murals you’ve done in San Diego?
Roxy: It’s hard to pick a favorite mural, each one is special and unique in its own way. A few of our favorites in San Diego are:
- Target Ocean Beach mural (4864 Ocean Ave., Ocean Beach): This project was our longest project we’ve ever worked on. We worked with the team at Target for over a year to make sure we got it right and we love how it turned out.
- Coronado Brewing (1205 Knoxville St., Bay Park): This is our biggest mural we’ve ever painted, 150 feet x 30 feet. We painted it in six days during a heatwave, so we felt very accomplished when we finished.
- Smile You’re in San Diego (1st and C Streets): This mural is such a bright pop of color and we love seeing people take photos with it.
Pandr Design Co. favorite murals
Why did you decide to start the Drunk on Lettering podcast?
Phoebe: We started it three years ago because we were constantly scrolling and enjoying people’s artwork on Instagram, but we didn’t know anything about their personalities. We wanted to know about the human behind the designs, the paintings, the packaging. It also serves as a good stress release for us. We’ll be working really hard all week and the podcast gives us an opportunity to sit, relax and have fun interviewing some really amazing artists.
Who have been some of your favorite or most interesting podcast guests?
Roxy: Each guest is interesting in their own way, so we love that we get to interview so many people from all over the world. We’ve gotten the chance to talk to people that we never thought we’d get to chat with that we’ve idolized for years! Some of those include Erik Marinovich, Jon Contino, Gemma O’Brien and Lisa Congdon.
What is the purpose of Ladies Who Paint?
Phoebe: Ladies Who Paint is our nonprofit that we started in 2019. We are dedicated to empowering female artists and beautifying the city of San Diego. As you can imagine, sexism exists in our industry and we are trying to change that. We flew in 10 incredible artists from all over the world to each paint a mural in the East Village and we are planning to do the same in October 2020.
Speaking of the “Ladies Who Paint Mural Walk,” any exciting projects coming up in 2020 you can tell us about?
Roxy: Ladies Who Paint is going to be an annual event! This year, we opened it up for application to select artists. The application is open through the end of February and our 10 artists will be selected at the end of April. We will continue to bring more public art to East Village with 10 murals being installed during our 2020 mural festival (Oct. 18 to 24). We again will be selecting 10 artists from all over the world that come from different places with diverse styles and backgrounds.
For more information on all of Roxy and Phoebe’s projects, visit pandrdesignco.com, ladieswhopaint.org and drunkonlettering.com. Follow Phoebe Cornog at @phoebecornog (21.9K followers) and Roxy Prima at @roxyprima (37.7K followers).