ABOUT LVB
Lauren V. Brown (LVB) founded LVBrown Studio in 2014 to offer her unique conceptual design services to professionals in the water resources and ecological restoration fields. Over the ten years since the studio’s founding, LVB’s design services have expanded to include interpretive signage design, illustrated maps, and environmental illustration.
Lauren draws from over twenty years of experience spanning professional landscape architecture to academic and applied expertise in river and ecological restoration. After an eight-year initial career with the SWA Group in Houston, Lauren left Texas to learn about watershed science and policy at UW-Madison in Wisconsin. There, she earned two Master of Science degrees in Landscape Architecture and Water Resources Management.
Lauren draws from strong site design and spatial analysis skills from her landscape architecture career. She speaks the same language as water resource engineers and ecologists from interdisciplinary coursework at UW and a three-year apprenticeship with Inter-Fluve Inc. As design principal of LVB, Lauren helps her clients and project teams analyze and problem-solve while producing compelling final visual deliverables that communicate the plan, map or story.
The process of problem-solving is hands-on for LVB. The magic begins when the pencil hits paper (or now the digital tablet). LVB uses a unique blend of media, including GIS mapping software, hand-drawn and digital illustrations, and Adobe’s graphic design suite. Final visual products are used in stakeholder engagement materials, public outreach campaigns, brochures and guidebooks, client websites, StoryMaps, and physical displays such as trailhead kiosks and interpretive signage displays.
Lauren is a Certified Interpretive Guide and Consultant Member of National Association for Interpretation.
LVBrown Studio is a woman-owned small business located in Austin, TX, collaborating with clients nationally and internationally.
LVBrown Studio is a federally-registered EDWOSB | SDB | WBE | WOSB, Unique Entity ID: FC8NTWLDLFN3 / Cage Code 7S7L4, and a registered Texas HUB Vendor #20512782.
About Lauren
Intuitive visual problem solver. Water-lover and wind-lover. Scientist and Artist. Creative yet practical. Naturally curious. Enamored with maps and navigating without them. SUP-er, sailor, spirited dancer. Believes that good design matters and that there is magic in the art of making it.
About LVB’s Design Process
All LVB design projects move through three phases of design beginning with project understanding, design ideation, and final art production.
The Project Understanding phase involves reviewing project goals and desired outcomes, gathering relevant data and imagery, preparing project basemaps, and sifting through background materials to develop an outline for the project or story.
The Design Ideation phase is where the pencil hits the page (or tablet), and ideas emerge in visual form in pencil sketches and color washes, storyboards and rough mockups. This is an iterative design phase where we review drafts and test design solutions.
Once the design drafts are approved, the project moves into Final Production, where LVB refines the narrative copy and illustrated artworks, prepares final graphic design formatting, copy-editing and proofing, and packages the final deliverables.
**While aspects of the design phases overlap, it’s important for the client to share relevant data during the Project Understanding phase and provide approval on drafts before moving to Final Production in order to stay within the estimated project time and budget.
