Who we are

A creative-direction studio for e-commerce brands — the work that decides whether a brand reads as the leader in its category.

The offer spans brand strategy, photo & video direction, and Shopify builds — taken as a single piece of work or scoped to what a brand needs now. Launched in 2026 as the principal's own studio after roughly twenty years building brands and e-commerce, including pretti.cool, taken to the top of its category as proof the method works.

Senior, studio-level, and proof-driven. We lead with outcomes, not adjectives.

Named for the composite flower

An aster isn't one flower. What reads as a single bloom is dozens of tiny flowers working in concert.

That's the studio's thesis wearing a boutonnière: a brand is a hundred small decisions — strategy, photography, storefront — that either add up to one clear thing or don't. The name also reads star in Greek — the asterisk is literally a "little star." Both are true; neither needs explaining. The tagline thread runs from there: "Small things, working in concert."

The House is the fashion kind — the founder came up through apparel design, where a house isn't a building, it's a point of view. A botanical wink is allowed sparingly and self-aware, never as the load-bearing joke. The asset is the precision, not the flower — the small parts adding up is the hero. Use the name thread in a few hero and CTA moments, not on every page, or it becomes a tic.

Where we stand

• Senior, studio-level — not a freelancer. Vague-by-design about headcount.
• Proof-driven. Lead with outcomes — multiples, percentages, counts — never absolute dollar figures.
• We built our own proof. pretti.cool was taken to the top of its category — evidence the method works, kept as context, never leaned on as a crutch.

Who we're for

E-commerce founders who know they have something good and want a senior creative partner to shape it into the brand it deserves to be. Some need the whole build; some a retainer; some one scoped project.

How we sound

Quietly confident, editorial, senior. A creative director who has done this for twenty years and doesn't need to oversell. Five rules carry it:

• "We" / third-person — never "I." Positions a studio, not a freelancer.
• Lead with the answer. Natural prose, warm but precise. No corporate filler, no hedging.
• No absolute dollar values in public copy — multiples, %, counts, time horizons.
• Confident, not soft. Let the concrete claim carry it; skip the reassurance filler.
• The name thread, sparingly. The sum is the hero, not the flower.

Names & conventions

• Aster House — everywhere. Never "KG Studio" / "Kathrine Gilmer Studio" (superseded).
• "e-commerce" — hyphenated, lowercase mid-sentence; title-case "E-Commerce" only in titles and label lists. Never "ecommerce."
• Shopify, Klaviyo, Faire as branded; DTC, SEO, UX/UI, CD uppercase.

Entity attribution — make Aster House / Kathrine the subject, the entity the context

• 88 Venture client work (J.Adams, Bonsai Heirloom, Shoes for Dinner, Sun Bay Foods, pediped): "…led and directed by Kathrine Gilmer of Aster House, as contract creative director for 88 Venture Studio."
• pretti.cool: "…by Kathrine Gilmer of Aster House, co-founder and creative director of pretti.cool."
• Aster House direct (e.g. Jeff Gilmer Photography): "…by Aster House."

Wordmark & favicon

The wordmark is "ASTER HOUSE" set in Optician Sans — caps, weight 400, with tight tracking (≈ −0.01em). There is no separate graphic logomark; the wordmark is the mark.

Favicon

The brand favicon is the asterisk, set in Optician Sans — typographically a "little star," the same Greek root as the aster itself, and it happens to draw as a six-petal bloom. It's also the editor's mark for the detail everyone else missed, which is the job. (Proposed 2026-08-01 — pending founder sign-off.)

Brand · on sumac

Brand · on cream

Typefaces

Palette

Warm, earthy, editorial — a cream base and sumac ink, with a small set of accents used sparingly.

Signature

The studio's Gmail signature. Person leads, the mark anchors, contact and tagline sit back in sumac.

Kathrine Gilmer Founder & Creative Director Small things, working in concert. Creative direction for e-commerce brands asterhouse.studio  ·  @asterhouse.studio

Install page (click-to-copy, two options): brand.asterhouse.studio/signature.html. The live signature uses real Optician Sans for the mark; the tagline is IvyPresto with a Georgia fallback in mail clients.

How we work together

Flagship-first. Lead with the Complete Engagement; the rest scopes down from there. All tiers include access to the production network — photographers, videographers, web developers, graphic designers.

The anchor case — J.Adams

Our canonical proof point. Multiples only, always this exact set:

Plus +15% AOV on the full case-study page. Never translate these into absolute dollar figures.

Where to find us

Platform · Cargo 3Principal · Kathrine GilmerLaunched 2026