Hi. I’m Stefani.
I make things make sense.

I’m the designer, developer, problem-solver, and person behind Hearth & Pixel.

I help small businesses take the ideas, branding, websites, graphics, and assorted digital chaos they already have—and turn them into something that actually feels like them.

I got here kind of sideways.

I didn’t take a perfectly straight path into design.

I’ve worked in web hosting. I’ve managed inventory. I’ve written website content, built WordPress pages, untangled systems, created graphics, fixed things that weren’t working, and spent a frankly unreasonable amount of time figuring out why something that should work absolutely refused to.

Somewhere along the way, I realized those things weren’t actually unrelated.

I’m really good at seeing how the pieces fit together.

I like useful things.

Beautiful is great.
Beautiful and useful is better.

That applies to websites, branding, packaging, business systems—and, apparently, whatever weird little thing has wandered into my workspace this week.

I’m not interested in making something beautiful just for the sake of making it beautiful.

I want the website that’s easier for your customers to use. The brand you can actually keep consistent. The packaging that makes sense when you’re assembling fifty of them at 11 p.m.

That probably comes from spending a lot of my life making things work in the middle of actual life.

I’ve redesigned our house room by room. I turn my kids’ birthday parties into tiny creative productions because apparently buying normal party favors would be too easy. I make things, organize things, troubleshoot things, and regularly ask, “Okay, but how could this work better?”

That’s the same brain I bring to your business.

HOW I THINK

I design for real life.

Most of my projects start with, “I could probably make that.”

Sometimes that means rebuilding a website. Sometimes it means redesigning a room in our house because the way it was laid out made absolutely no sense.

Sometimes it means turning my kids’ birthday parties into full-blown creative projects—custom favors, packaging, vinyl, 3D prints, whatever strange little idea I’ve decided needs to exist.

I like figuring things out. I like learning how things are made. And I really like that moment when an idea that existed entirely in my head becomes something I can actually hold, use, click, hang on a wall, or hand to someone.

WHY HEARTH & PIXEL

Small businesses deserve design that actually feels like them.

I built Hearth & Pixel because I kept seeing the same problem: good businesses trying to squeeze themselves into websites, branding, and systems that were never really made for them.

Maybe the website technically works, but it doesn’t feel anything like the business you’ve built. Maybe your branding has evolved one Canva graphic at a time until nothing quite matches anymore. Maybe you know what you want people to experience—you just don’t know how to turn that into something cohesive.

That’s the part I love.

I want to understand how your business actually works, what makes it yours, and what your customers need from you. Then we can build something that looks good, makes sense, and feels like it belongs to you.

Because your online presence shouldn’t feel like a costume your business has to wear.

✴︎ It should feel like an extension

of the thing

you already built.

WHEN I’M NOT DOING THIS

I’m probably making something else.

I’m Stefani—the person behind Hearth & Pixel.

When I’m not designing websites or untangling somebody’s branding, I’m usually making something, fixing something, rearranging something, reading something, or convincing myself that a project will definitely only take an hour.

I live in the Quad Cities with my husband, our three boys, two old dogs, and an unreasonable number of ongoing projects.

I like good typography, weird little handmade things, houses with personality, businesses with stories, and solving problems that have been annoying someone for way too long.

Basically, I have a hard time leaving things at “good enough” when I can see how they could work better.

Got something that could work better?

Whether you’re starting from scratch, trying to make sense of what you already have, or just know something isn’t quite working—I want to hear about it.