Meet Lindsay Ludlow and Tom Ludlow | Tend Studio Co-Founders

We had the good fortune of connecting with Lindsay Ludlow and Tom Ludlow and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lindsay Ludlow and Tom Ludlow, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
Being married as well as business partners, the work/ life balance is definitely a challenge. Before we were in business together, we both enjoyed hearing about each other’s jobs, helping one another troubleshoot challenges, and laughing together about funny things that had happened throughout our work days. Now that we work so closely together, though, Tom as Creative Director, and Lindsay as Director of Operations for Tend Studio, we have to be careful to create boundaries between our work and home lives. Especially in an age where communication from clients is constantly at our fingertips, it can be very tricky to shut it off. We have a few “rules,” that help us keep the balance as best we can. First, we have a firm rule not to discuss work in bed. It sounds silly, but it’s amazing how easy it is to strike up a full blown project review at 10 pm while trying to relax and watch TV together. While it’s highly convenient to have your business partner available 24/7, we also try to respect our home life and family time by limiting work talk around our young children, and setting aside specific times in the evenings to meet about work issues, when necessary.

We’re both passionate about our studio, so it’s easy to want to continue pushing on projects around the clock. But there’s so much more to life than our careers, and it feels good to be able to “clock out” every now and then to enjoy our family and the beautiful state we call home.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Tom graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado in 2010 with a degree in visual effects and motion graphics. Since that time he’s worked consistently in the field as an animator, a VJ, and a creative director. Lindsay has a MA in English and began her career teaching literacy before moving into web design and copywriting. In 2019, due to a layoff at Tom’s agency job, we decided to take our careers into our own hands and start our own studio.

We founded and operate Tend Studio, a motion design & video production studio focused on delivering 2D & 3D animations, effective videos & live experiences. We use 2D & 3D animation to create visually dynamic experiences that spark audience’s imaginations.

We’re filmmakers, and love to tell stories that blend motion design with high quality video production. Our most recent film, Forward! To the Moon, is a planetarium film that we created in conjunction with CU Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium, and is now being shown in 170+ planetariums worldwide.

One of our favorite art forms is projection mapping. We design, create, and produce animated and live action content mapped onto buildings and natural formations such as Red Rocks Amphitheater.

In addition to the artistic work we do daily through Tend Studio, Tom also creates 3D animated NFTs under the moniker Denver Donkey. Diving deep into the world of NFTs, crypto currency, and web3 has been quite the adventure these past few years, and has opened more doors than we imagined, both with art and business opportunities. For example, you can see some of his work in the Tripp VR mobile app.

Along the way, we’ve had to overcome many challenges, from developing our brand and messaging, to finding clients, to finding a location for our studio, to discovering that a warehouse full of cranking computers with no air conditioning wasn’t going to work well in the summer months. Chief among our challenges, though, was definitely launching a business 9 months before the start of a global pandemic- we had just gotten into a rhythm with our business, and bam! Everything changed on a dime. But gratefully, we were able to continue work on our planetarium film through the shutdown, and now we finally feel like we’re back to business as “usual.”

Our advice to other creative business owners would be to keep overhead as low as possible, stay nimble, and to persevere when challenges arise.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We are both Colorado natives and we’re very proud of our home state. We love to show it off to friends! Here’s an itinerary for (what we feel) is some of the best Colorado has to offer.

Day One: Denver
We’d start things off in Denver, as most Colorado trips do. From the airport, we’d head to Pinche Tacos (a.k.a. Tacos Tequila Whiskey) on York Street for some street tacos and palomas. Then, we’d head over to Meow Wolf Convergence Station for a maximalist, out-of-this-world experience. As artists, we’re blown away by the sensory overload and attention to detail in this 4-story immersive art exhibition. We might get a little lost inside, but that’s half the fun. For dinner and a show, we’d head to Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, which we’re so stoked is finally open again after a long covid closure. Ophelia’s is classy, funky, and fun, just like Denver itself.

Day Two: Fort Collins
We met at CSU, and Fort Collins still holds a huge piece of our hearts. From Denver, we’d head north towards Fort Collins, stopping in Longmont for lunch at Oskar Blues. In Fort Collins, we’d hop on some cruiser bikes for a brewery crawl, being sure to hit up O’Dells (Tom loves their 90 Shilling and Lindsay is a big fan of Sippin Pretty), New Belgium (their taps are always changing, but if you can score a La Folie sour brown ale you’re in for a treat) and end with a bite to soak up the beer at Coopersmith’s Pub in Old Town, where Tom loves the fish and chips and Lindsay swears by the summer salad topped with chicken salad.

Day Three: Heading West
Poudre Canyon – Steamboat
After breakfast on the patio at Rainbow Restaurant in FoCo, we’d head north through the Poudre Canyon, stopping at the Mishawaka Amphitheater, our favorite venue in Colorado. If you’re lucky enough to be driving through the canyon on a summer Sunday afternoon, you may be able to check out a free concert at the Mish. If not, it’s still a great place to grab lunch next to the river. If the Mish isn’t your speed, a picnic and hike along Hewlett Gulch trail would also be a great way to break up the drive.
We’d head out of the canyon and west to Steamboat Springs, where we’d enjoy a steak dinner at Oar House, followed by a soak at Strawberry Hot Springs. The next morning, a walk through the gorgeous Yampah River Botanic Park followed by brunch at Creekside Cafe would be perfection. We’d then get back on the road to head west towards Glenwood Springs.

Day Four: Glenwood Springs
After a drive through the gorgeous Glenwood Canyon, where we’d marvel at the ingenuity it took to construct an interstate through such a tight canyon, we’d arrive in Glenwood Springs. We’d be sure to take another dip in a hot springs, this time stopping at spa-like Iron Mountain Hot Springs if we were on an adults trip, or Glenwood Hot Springs for the water slides if we had our kiddos. Dinner at the Glenwood Canyon Brew Pub is always a treat (we recommend the Asian noodle salad and a side of onion rings). The next morning, we’d head up the tram to Glenwood Caverns for a cave tour; the Fairy Caves are gorgeous any time of year.

Day Five: Carbondale
From Glenwood, we’d head south to Carbondale, Lindsay’s hometown. Breakfast or lunch at the Village Smithy restaurant is a staple, and worth the wait. We recommend an order of the Santa Fe Corn Cakes for the table– don’t forget to add raspberry jam. In Carbondale, we’d also take a stroll down Main Street through the historic downtown, being sure to stop at Main Street Gallery, Lindsay’s parents’ gallery, to say hello and view their current selection of paintings, etchings and pottery by the region’s best artists. A slice of pizza at Pepinos is also a Carbondale must. Tom’s all-time favorite pastime is fly fishing, so we’d definitely take a trip to rip some lips on the Roaring Fork or Frying Pan River in the evening when the fishing gets good.

Day Six: Redstone and Marble
We’d head south down Hwy 133 to Redstone, the cutest little mountain village in Colorado, and also where we got married at the Redstone Inn. The Inn has great food, as does the Crystal Club Cafe. We’d be sure to take a stroll through town to the idyllic Redstone Town park, and show our guests the historic coke ovens, built in the late 1800s when Redstone was established as a coal mining town. From Redstone, we’d continue south to Marble for a walk around the Yule marble quarry, one of the largest marble deposits in the world, where marble was cultivated for use in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and marble sculptors actively create new works of art. We’d do some more fly fishing in Beaver Lake and end our day with dinner at Slow Groovin BBQ, perhaps the best BBQ west of… anywhere!

Day Seven: Back to the City
We’d pack up and head back to Denver via i70, stopping for a bite to eat at our favorite Blue Moon Bakery in Silverthorne, or the original Beau Jo’s in Idaho Springs. With any extra time in Denver, we’d love to take in a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater, a place that’s special to us for many reasons, including the fact that Tom projection mapped the amphitheater for a series of Big Gigantic concerts in 2010-2013. We’d be sad to say goodbye to our buddies, but would recommend a stop at Root Down restaurant in DIA’s C Concourse, a delicious, nutritious way to end a Colorado vacation.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We can honestly say that we would not be where we are in life without both sets of our parents. They have been constant cheerleaders since we decided to launch Tend Studio three years ago, providing countless hours of babysitting, advice, business connections and even financial support when we needed extra help along the way.

Lindsay’s parents, Franklin and Sally Norwood, started their own business, Main Street Gallery and the Framer in Carbondale, CO, together 40 years ago, and still own and operate the business today. They’ve been huge role models and mentors for what it means to be a couple in business in a creative industry, and we’ve turned to them many times with questions about logistics, bookkeeping, fabrication, advertising and more.

Tom’s parents, Greg and Cathy Ludlow, as well as his sister, Casey Mangan, live in our neighborhood, and have been an integral part of the Tend team, from caring for our kiddos while we work, to providing props for our videoshoots, to investing in our business and helping us grow from a basement startup to a fully functioning brick and mortar studio.

Last, we wouldn’t be where we are today without the Denver motion design and video production community. Thank you for the friendships, the advice, the freelancing help, and the opportunities you’ve sent our way. We grow by lifting each other up, and we’re so grateful to be growing with you.

Website: www.tend.studio

Instagram: @tend.studio

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tend-studio/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/denver_donkey

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tend.studio1

Youtube: https://vimeo.com/tendstudio

Image Credits
Tom Ludlow