Joe Binck ’11

For Joe Binck ’11, there was “never any question where I wanted to be after grade school.” After seeing his brothers (Dave ’05 and Matt ’07) go through the Prep, “the Prep was a part of me before I even stepped foot in the building as a Freshman in the fall of 2007.” This journey led to him creating his passion and eventually fulfilling his dream to own his own company, Grandstory Design, which he owns with his wife, Emily.
 
As a sophomore at the Prep, Binck auditioned for the Cape and Sword fall production, a vaudevillian farce called Scapin, and was cast in the show. He planned to return to the lacrosse team in the spring, where he always pictured himself scoring goals for the Prep, but Tony Braithwaite ’89 urged him to stick with the theatre program. After performing in Scapin, Binck fell in love with being on the stage and learning from the people who helped him to get on the stage. He went on to be in five more Cape and Sword shows, culminating with The Producers, and met people who are still his best friends to this day, including Braithwaite.
 
After graduating, Binck went on to study Architecture at Catholic University, where he learned how to design, though he had always had a passion for woodworking. “I grew up loving to be in wood shops, watching and learning from my family of craftsmen,” Binck says. “I would build little things as I learned how to use tools as a boy. My family jokes that my first specialty was making pointy sticks, as I loved using the benchtop sander on sticks that I’d pick up in the yard when I was very young.” Binck’s backgrounds in theater and woodworking allowed him to work in Catholic University’s theater’s scene shop building sets, and after graduation, he held positions working in Washington, DC as an exhibit designer, a theatrical set designer, a graphic designer, an event design fabricator, and a residential finish carpenter.
 
Binck had worked for himself since his time at the Prep, and, “it was always a dream of mine to be able to dive in full-time with my own company. After my wife and I got married in 2019, we moved to Philly with our dog, Wilson, and decided to start Grandstory Design.” Grandstory Design is a small fabrication studio specializing in designing and building custom furniture and interiors. Binck enjoys the ability to be creative and customize for his clients. 

“The more creative and custom we can get, the more we love it,” he says. “Having a background in designing and building creative and highly custom products in the theater, exhibit, and event industries, the thing I love about what we do is that each project is incredibly unique and different. And that’s what we offer our clients -- a product that is one of a kind -- whether they are looking for an heirloom piece of furniture or need things designed to fit their home or business a way that buying ‘off the shelf’ couldn’t achieve. It’s honestly sometimes hard to explain to people what we really do, because the whole idea is that we do anything and everything that can be designed and built in my small shop in Valley Forge, each thing entirely different from the last.” Some of Binck’s unique creations have included a Prep bench and Prep cornhole set which were auctioned off in the Prep’s annual auction.

For Binck, “the most important things I learned at the Prep weren't taught in classrooms. They were taught on Kairos, learning about my teachers’ and classmates’ lives and how I could be the most lovable version of myself. They were taught after Cape and Sword rehearsal, chatting about life and how to really put the Jesuit ideals of the ‘magis’ and ‘age quod agis’ into practice on and, more importantly, off the stage. They were taught on service trips, experiencing a great big world I barely knew and realizing how it’s actually not so big after all.” These experiences as a student at the Prep led Binck to join the Alumni Service Corps in the 2015-16 school year.

“I’m extremely lucky to work for myself and do what I love everyday, but I tell everyone that doing ASC was the best job I ever had," he says. This idea obviously resonated with his younger brother, Peter ’15, who also went on to be a part of the Alumni Service Corps. “It afforded me a unique opportunity to be on the opposite side of student life that I was a part of just 5 years prior -- to be the one sharing my life with students on Kairos, to be the one prompting conversations about life after Cape and Sword rehearsal, to be the one introducing students on service trips to a great big world they barely knew. No matter what my actual role was within the school, I felt that my most important task was to get to know the students and to be there for them, as a young and somewhat relatable recent college grad -- to be the person for them that I needed when I was their age. And, unsurprisingly, it was like looking in a mirror, remembering what my teenage perspective of things was when I was a student in the same building: what teachers were like, what things were important in life, who I thought I was.”

“It taught me that I’ll never stop learning and I’ll never be in a position where I’ve ‘figured it all out,’ something that allows me to grow every day as a designer, craftsman, and business owner (...and husband!),” he says.
 
For more information on Grandstory Design, click here to visit their website, click here to visit their Facebook page, and click here to visit their Instagram page. 
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