Conversations with Nick de Partee

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick de Partee

Hi Nick, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in Southern California. I was surrounded by music and art from my earliest memories. My dad showed me artists like Simon & Garfunkel and Eric Clapton on our family record player and I was hooked pretty quickly.

Fast forward and by junior high/high school I was playing in local bands every weekend and simultaneously falling in love with Photoshop and creating all sorts of (horrendous) artwork for flyers, posters, merch, and album art. I started to dream even then of working at a record label and doing album art for recording artists one day.

Lo and behold, I ended up finishing my Associate’s degree in graphic design and got an internship at a label called The Militia Group then got hired by their sister label, SideCho Records as a graphic designer. I got thrown straight into the madness for sure haha. But met some great people and loved getting real-life experience in design. Such a great learning experience.

After about a year I got an offer to go tech for a friend’s band called Kutless. I said yes (even though I truly had no real idea what a tech did haha). To keep this story short, I ended up replacing one of the guitarists a year later and found myself touring the world and writing/recording with the band for almost 8 years.

Finally, when my wife and I started having kids and growing our family, I came off the road and started Equal Seven Creative, my design studio focused on serving clients in the music industry. It was sort of a full circle moment coming back to design as a focus and still working with music artists in that way.

My life has always been a series of saying yes to opportunities, seeing where those doors took me, and then watching music and art swirl around me through it all.

This year I’m celebrating 10 years of Equal Seven’s journey, have added more contractors to my team, and we are more focused than ever on serving our amazing clients ranging from artists, to sync agencies, labels, and management companies by providing them with design assets like album art, packaging, lyric videos, websites, visualizers, social content and more.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t know that any entrepreneur’s journey is smooth haha. Mine has been full of opportunities followed by the need to grow and learn (which is typically painful) followed by seasons of enjoying a new level of work and then that cycle continues. Every time a wall is hit, I can definitely say it typically teaches me something about myself, my business, or my clients. I have slowly learned to embrace the pain, celebrate challenges, and just do my best to trust the process.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
With my design studio we focus on album art and other creative assets for music artists. Products include album art, print packaging, websites, lyric videos, animation, illustration, visualizers, motion artwork, and other social/promo assets to help artists stand out.

Along the journey, I also co-founded AVVAY, the first national location scouting company, based here in Nashville. We serve producers, production companies, filmmakers, and other visual storytellers by providing top-notch location sourcing across the US. It has been a dream to be able to help the creative community at large bring their vision to life through AVVAY.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I think being willing to say yes to opportunities, even if they sound crazy at times, has been the single most impactful characteristic of my journey. Every yes has led to the next chapter and opened new doors I never would have been looking for otherwise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.equalseven.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/equalseven