Zara and Jessica are award winning designers who met while working at an advertising agency in Minneapolis, MN. Before striking out on their own with Elephant & Castle, they worked on high profile clients as well as cool indie start ups. Their work has been featured in Communication Arts, Print, Graphis, How Magazine, The One Show, The Webbys, The FWA and AIGA MN as well as on blogs such as sfgirlbybay, Bloesem, Notcot.org, Mint and Random Inspiration.

Jessica Hall Burns
Whether drawing, sewing doll dresses or fixing a bike with her dad, as a child, Jessica found great joy in craft and creativity. Needless to say, it did not surprise her parents in the least when she declared that she would study Art History at Gustavus Adolphus College with minors in Studio Art and English. After a brief stint teaching middle school art, Jessica happily moved to the world of graphic design, where she developed a love for typography and pattern. She is married to a handsome designer and they share their house with two dogs and two cats.

Zara Gonzalez Hoang
Zara grew up as a Midwestern girl in a family of New York Jews and Puerto Ricans. In other words, she has always been a tiny spitfire in a land of stoics. As a child, she made up fantastical menageries of animals which she drew in notebook after notebook. This didn’t change as she got older and eventually she graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a Fine Arts degree and a focus on Graphic Design. She’s worked as a designer and illustrator for almost a decade. Zara lives in a cute little bungalow with her filmmaker husband and curly coated corgi. She loves the color pink, monsters, and reading cookbooks before bed.