Ashlee Arceneaux Jones

Co-Owner | Also Known As
Profiled: October 2014

⏮ REWIND

Biz New Orleans’ first-ever, nationally award-winning monthly feature “Why Didn’t I Think of That?” shared the story of a young artist named Ashlee Arceneaux who had just made the leap from working as a store artist for Whole Foods to running her own business, Smallchalk, our of her shotgun home in the Marigny. Arceneaux specialized in creating custom, hand lettered signage for area businesses, a majority of which were restaurants. Among her clientele were all four Felipe’s Taquerias, Barcadia, Morning Call, Ruby Slipper, Mulate’s and Fair Grinds Coffee House. She also used her skills to create custom, hand-lettered wedding signage, which at the time was making up to 30% of her business.

Just a few months before being profiled in Biz, Arceneaux had received the “Outstanding Millennial in Innovation” award at the 2014 Millennial Awards, sponsored by Spears Consulting Group. The awards honored exceptional young professionals in the Greater New Orleans area.

“My most immediate future goal is to get out of my house, workwise,” she said. “Ideally, I’d like to have a retail space, somewhere I could sell custom signs. It would also be nice to have a space where I could have clients come to me.”

⏭ FAST-FORWARD

Arceneaux did reach her goal of moving her work out of her house. After marrying restaurateur Brett Jones, Arceneaux Jones moved to a few different studios on Magazine Street over the years.

In the beginning of 2023, she decided to make another big leap.

“I had been working with a friend of mine, Kara McGuire, for the last five years. Her background is in graphic design, and we had collaborated on quite a few projects,” she said. “It got to the point where most of work was being done together and we enjoyed working together so we decided to merge and form a new company.”

The duo’s new design studio, Also Known As, officially launched in January 2023 at 2122 Magazine Street in the Lower Garden District. The full-service branding and creative agency assists companies in every stage of development.

“Companies come to us sometimes with not even a name,” said Arceneaux Jones. “We’ll help them develop their name, their logo, their brand identity, website, product and brand imagery, anything they need.”

Arceneaux Jones has worked with a variety of clients, including French Quarter Realty and Bonfolk, but said her client list still happily features a lot of restaurants, including her husband’s restaurant, Barracuda, which will open its fourth location this fall in Bay St. Louis.

“We just did the rebranding for Commander’s Palace,” she noted. “All that work is going to start rolling out toward the end of this year.”
While the new studio’s clients are primarily based in New Orleans, expansion has already begun into New York and New Jersey.

Back in 2014, working 10-hour days, seven days a week from her home, Arceneaux Jones had expressed the fear she felt stepping out on her own and said she hoped her hard work would pay off someday.

“I’d say it’s definitely paid off,” she said. “But then I’d still express that fear to this day. It’s the fear, though, that keeps me motivated.”