Her Story
About Bonnie
Bonnie Hoffmann is a San Francisco Bay Area–based Art Director and Founder and CEO of Honey Lacquer Toys, an AI-driven creative studio focused on brand mascots, collectible design, and next-generation identity systems. Her work sits at the intersection of art direction, generative AI, and product design, where she develops characters and visual worlds that help brands build immediate emotional connection with audiences. Guided by her belief that “the toy is the new logo,” she creates collectible figures and brand identities that translate storytelling into tangible, memorable objects using a workflow that blends traditional design, AI image generation, and rapid 3D production.
Her career spans advertising, branding, and design across studios, agencies, and consulting environments. She began studying studio art at 16 before entering the highly competitive advertising program at the University of Colorado. Early in her career, she worked as an art direction intern at Sterling Rice Group under Kathy Broyles, former creative director of CBS, contributing to installations for the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, where musicians’ artifacts were transformed into curated museum-style exhibits. She later founded Fawn Design Studios, partnering with startups in Boulder on branding and packaging, before moving into consulting work with 71&Change, supporting Nike supply chain initiatives in Beaverton, Oregon. She continued her consulting career through Mitchell+Palmer, working with Micron Technology in the San Francisco Bay Area on brand systems, campaigns, and enterprise communications.
Today, Bonnie leads Honey Lacquer Toys as both creative director and hands-on builder, combining strategic art direction with physical fabrication. Her process includes deep-dive client onboarding, concept development, AI-assisted character creation, and rapid prototyping through tools such as Meshi, which converts 2D designs into 3D-printed collectible toys delivered on accelerated timelines. She is also actively developing finishing processes such as painting, sanding, and priming to complete production-ready pieces in-house. Her daily work blends client pitching, in-studio making, social media storytelling, and brand system design, supported by a proprietary “Glass Zipper” model where stakeholders evaluate a single presented concept within a structured voting window. Alongside studio leadership, she is actively seeking investors, writing grants, participating in pitch competitions, and has applied to Y Combinator to scale the studio’s vision.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Bonnie
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to having to create my own path in a male-dominated industry. The advertising field is still very much like Mad Men with a lot of sexism, and I've faced significant hurdles because of my gender. I've watched a lot of my male colleagues who I started out with get right into agencies and advance quickly because of the boys club culture, while I haven't been invited into that world. But that's actually become my strength - I've had to do a lot of my own thing and start my own businesses because I've outgrown rooms I'm in due to the sexism. When I started my ad career, I was in a really toxic ad firm where a director would say things like 'why don't you just rub your boobs together and go ask that guy to get the file.' I've had teachers who were threatened by my talent and went out of their way to hold my career back when they were supposed to be helping me. But I've finally hit a level of detachment recently where I've let the past go, I'm not holding resentment, and I've blocked those negative influences on LinkedIn because they don't get to watch my rise. Part of launching Honey Lacquer Toys is having it be very female-focused with a feminine aesthetic, and I'm using that as a strength because when men are all together, they start to have the same ideas and aesthetic. Women have the emotional IQ that makes us different. I've been going to female meetup groups and meeting really powerful women, and I feel like I'm in a much different place now where the past isn't holding me back anymore.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received is that I can live out my childhood dreams if I stay connected to what first inspired me. I fell in love with advertising and design at a very young age, and as I grew, that curiosity and passion only deepened. I’ve learned that a meaningful career is built by continuously returning to that original sense of wonder while refining it through experience, discipline, and craft.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice to young women entering this industry is that you can absolutely build a successful and impactful career in this field, regardless of it historically being male-dominated. Your perspective, creativity, and voice are not only valid but essential to shaping the future of design and advertising. Focus on strengthening your craft, trusting your instincts, and consistently showing up with confidence in your ideas. Over time, your work will speak for itself, and you’ll find that there is space for you to lead, innovate, and define success on your own terms.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge and opportunity for me right now is that I just launched my company in January of this year, so I'm a new CEO building everything from the ground up. I'm in that phase where things feel like they're snowballing and ricocheting like a domino effect, but I need to connect with the right people at the right time to really grow and flourish. I'm actively seeking investors and doing a lot of pitch meetings and grant writing to get funding. I've applied for Y Combinator and I go to pitch competitions to get the word out there. I'm also working on building my social media presence, which is starting to blossom - I just got 200 new followers, which is exciting. Another challenge I'm tackling right now is the painting process for the toys, getting them colored properly. But I'm also seeing the opportunity in how AI has really enabled me to do so much - I can do all my photography with AI, make characters with AI, and use platforms like Meshi to turn 2D images into 3D printed toys within a week. This allows me to operate differently from traditional 40-person agencies with tons of overhead. The opportunity is in how Gen Z is really resonating with brand characters because their attention spans are getting shorter and they've been marketed to their whole lives, so characters bypass the prefrontal cortex and create immediate connections.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
In my work, what's most important to me is creating something meaningful and building my brand in a way that's authentic and female-focused. I want to give myself credit for my work because I feel like I've held myself back and haven't been given the credit I deserve in the past. I'm focused on getting my name out there and gaining credibility. I also value the creative process and staying inspired - I love going to museums because I'm an art lover, especially pop art and modern art. I go to toy stores like Pop Mart and the Nintendo store to check out collectibles for inspiration since I'm in the toy business. I'm also really into fashion, so I'll walk into Hermes or Tiffany's to get inspiration from the fashion world, and I love watching the Met Gala and staying in tune with fashion culture. On the personal side, giving back to my community is really important to me. On Tuesdays, I volunteer at the food bank here in San Francisco, and I also help with their monthly volunteer pop-ups, getting booths and things set up. It's a nice little community here in Treasure Island, San Francisco, and being part of that matters to me.
Keep Exploring
More Influential Women · Colorado
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.