 When she's not working from a studio in the mission that she shares with Eric Marinovich So he's traveling giving talks and inspiring people. I am glad we have the opportunity today to be inspired by her Please welcome Jessica Hish Everybody thanks for coming if I look slightly flushed. It's because apparently the person inside my body has a crush on Tanya's voice Because that was one of the most distracting 20 like 30 seconds of my life like Chill it out Anyway, I I'm really excited to talk to you guys today The title of my talk is Art as Therapy, which was originally a little bit more kind of about the transition and Existential crisis is I've gone through moving from being a non-parent to being a parent But I've decided to reframe it because we're all kind of going through an existential crisis right now So hopefully this resonates with you. I mixed things up quite a bit today So, yeah, anyway, but I thought I would start off kind of giving you a little introduction about how I got into lettering and This is a path that I really recommend Everybody follow like just you know, you can do your own thing, but this really worked for me So if you feel like doing this yourself like feel free to copy First definitely decorate all of the trapper keepers of all the popular kids in your grade school I was always on the cusp of popularity because I wanted to be popular So desperately that of course I could not be popular but because I could draw everybody's names in a really bad-ass matter manner I was invited to stand on the periphery of many people's parties and I will say that whatever you can use as your social capital, you know, like really works. So Go for it Next this step is maybe skippable But you know start a cover band that you never actually plan to participate in because you just want to make t-shirts for your cover band Mine was in the fourth grade. I made a Janet Jackson cover band called if and then made a bunch of art for it Which I wish I could find somewhere my mom saved like all of my weird like non-farside comics that I drew But did not save a lot of this other early stuff Next on your Windows 95 machine get a copy of MS publisher and order a bunch of samples from paper direct And then make certificates about every member of your family, especially your brother and his worst farts in the world I Actually didn't really I like it It was this was like a total epiphany that I've been a graphic designer essentially since like the third or fourth grade Without realizing it because I was like obsessed with making fake certificates and stuff like that because we had all those like sports borders and things And this is like I don't know if this is still a thing that you can do But we had like foil that you could run through a laser printer that you could then like fake foil stamp onto like random laser printouts It was pretty advanced. I have to thank my mom for being on top of technology This one's really important though like make sure that you get a pair of flare jeans and draw like the most embarrassing shit ever on them about Your band that you're really into which I'm sure is Dave Matthews band and Then you are thankful for the rest of your life that like 16 year olds are not allowed to get tattoos of fire dancers Because you would for sure have one on the small of your back right now This is probably the most important step though Which is apply to art school and get in and then have the most severe self-esteem fallout in the entire world Because you thought you were such hot shit being like the best at drawing in your tiny school in Pennsylvania And then realize that like everybody else that you're in art school with has been going to like Ceramic sleepaway camp since they were seven So all of your like really well articulated drawings of shoes like kind of like Feel like garbage now, but it's all for the best And in short succession Find a graphic design so that you don't have to paint your feelings draw words for graphic design and then draw only words And now you are a lettering artist So I didn't really understand lettering. I'll keep my like general introduction to myself pretty brief I ended up working for Louise Feely after I graduated college And I did a ton of lettering for projects when I was in art school, but I didn't actually understand That's what I was doing. I thought I was just being like really thrifty and avoiding buying fonts and Even when I worked for Louise. I mean Louise didn't really call herself a lettering artist She was always a graphic designer that incorporated a lot of hand-done type in her work And most of the work that she and her staff do are very historically referential So it does sort of feel like you're doing more like revival type-based work than you are doing custom lettering But I did a lot of lettering while working for her And it was really during that time frame that I kind of started to understand that this was what I really wanted to do with my time and Simultaneously I had been doing a lot of freelance work and was doing a lot of really illustrative lettering I after I graduated I sort of realized that I should have been in school for illustration all along because really all I wanted was an excuse to draw all day and illustration is that excuse and Even now like anyone that's within the lettering field kind of understands that it's far less of a design graphic design profession profession Than it is an illustration profession Just the way that the entire world operates is very very similar to the way that commercial illustration Operates and you work on the same sorts of projects with the same source of clients and I Like sort of ended up becoming like an illustrative letterer through that time I was so stoked about discovering my love for type and lettering that I Got the word type tattooed on my bicep in lettering which the nerds are very happy to point out and At the time I was like you guys need to beat stop being such crazy Pedantic idiots and just like accept that graphic designers now own the word type And it's like a master category for all things that include letter forms and they're like ha ha that's not how this works blah blah and And I was like okay, whatever until I started working with clients and then Like most of the time when they would use the word font incorrectly. They were just using it incorrectly When they would say like I really like the font on that book cover that you made and I'm like, oh, it's not a font I drew it and they're like, oh, I know and I'm like, okay. That's not the right word then So I would just accept that face value that you know Whatever graphic designers just aren't like the crazy semantics people that type people are But every now and then what would happen was even though a job was like Explicitly clear in what they were asking me to do of like draw this five letter word Draw this five letter font for our book cover or whatever And then I would send them over a flattened tiff of the art They would go where is the OTF file and I'm like you needed an OTF file of a five letter word That's gonna appear on one cover like you actually were using the word font correctly now I should probably understand these terminologies So after I sort of really started getting why all those different categories and subcategories were important Not only for getting clients to kind of understand where my role was within a project and what the deliverables would be But also like how I could delegate stuff to other people when I really wasn't right for the job Like if someone came to me from a magazine and said we need 50 headlines in six days And the budget is $2,000 and I'm like you should hire a calligrapher a brush calligrapher that can do this very fast And so it allowed me to like delegate my work to other people and also kind of educate people about Why it makes sense that people do more specialized work within this bigger industry? And I got so psyched about it that I went around telling everybody about all this stuff and I spoke at like I think 70 or 80 conferences something like that I just spoke at American Greetings this last week and now I'm speaking to you find people But you all know what that is because you're all a bunch of nerds And one of the amazing side effects of this has been that the lettering industry like has completely blown up like it's insane And I definitely don't take all the credit for that But I certainly did a lot of legwork advocating for this industry, which is awesome And then you know you can't spit without hitting someone that does chalk lettering or something like that If you just like search for any form of micro niche lettering on Pinterest you'll just turn up pages and pages and pages of stuff and Which is really cool. It's just nice that people know what I do for a living But the other thing that is hard and that I've had a harder time dealing with recently is sort of like like struggling with this like am I a person that makes motivational posters for a living You know and that's really hard like I I I want to not have this be my reaction but Every time I think about these like how many fucking mark twain quotes are there like on Pinterest right now Like every time that I like think about how many people are spending like you know 40 hours on a thing that a thousand people have drawn already I get a little weird and I get a little weird about my place in the universe and I've been having these like creeping feelings lately Where I feel like art is selfish, you know And I think that we all get this feeling that like you know People trying to impose this feeling on to us that like because we love what we do We shouldn't be paid like there's all these sort of things like well I hate my job and I have a hundred sixty thousand dollars in debt So therefore I should make a lot of money, but you love your job and didn't actually go to college I went to college, but you know other people didn't college Therefore you should like make peanuts because you're not allowed to both get paid and love your job and I Like it's hard for me to not feel like sometimes the work that I'm doing is selfish because you know if if what you're doing is like Helping to sell soda and you see other people in the world doing like crazy grandiose things It's really difficult to sign it sort of like feel okay about your position in the universe and this feeling really started creeping in when I moved to San Francisco and part of it is just because I didn't move to San Francisco and immediately had like a crazy posse of art making friends like most of my friends upon Immediately moving here. We're within the startup community because my we moved here because my husband got a job at Facebook and Everyone that we were meeting was like through Facebook or other companies and it was really awesome I mean at first I was totally that person at the coffee shop being like I can't believe all these people are talking about venture capital How cool and then like two seconds later. I was like can't somebody just talk about a band already But at the time it was like very novel and very cool and interesting and then all of a sudden It started being like man, everyone that I know is working on these huge projects That are like disrupting industries and changing the lives of people sometimes in a real literal way and sometimes You know like we pick up your laundry for free way And I was having kind of a problem Figuring out like how do I stay motivated doing the work that I'm doing if I feel like I'm not having that big of an impact and What sort of helped me get around it at the time was like okay Well, I love doing my work, and I don't care that the work that I do You know isn't gonna help build wells in Africa all the time I Really love the process of doing it and I really am proud of the end result So I can kind of counter that with my for fun projects Which give me a lot of personal fulfillment that make me feel like I am having impact in the world So for a while what I would be doing was basically working 24 hours a day And I would be working on client work that you know I would get a lot of artistic fulfillment out of but I didn't get that sort of like deep in your gut fulfillment from and then working on these educational projects on the side that you know Really helped me feel like I was actually changing people's lives Even if it was on a much smaller scale than say, you know working at Facebook or doing something that is huge Like you know making a website where you can find printers like I know that this is not like a life changer But it's something that can be a huge inconvenience for people And if I can make something that would help them out. Why not? The most recent one I did was I created this email choose your own adventure tool on my website so I love like doing writing and assisting people with like how to manage design business stuff and I Oh, you know the my should I work for free flow chart that I made kind of blew up Which tells you whether or not you should work for free And I wrote this really long post a few years ago about how to price artwork that I still get you know Multiple emails a week about how people still reference it constantly to give them like permission to ask for real money for projects And so I'm always kind of like I love working within this world Even though I'm like helping other creatives instead of helping people that are like literally lifting people out of the gutter It still feels really good and Doing these two things simultaneously was a way for me to really feel like I was getting a ton of artistic satisfaction From my work, but then also a lot of intellectual satisfaction from my for fun projects but then something happened and all of a sudden I did not have all the time in the world to devote you know 24 hours a day to working on whatever projects I decided to work on and So the issue with this like having to separate these two worlds of like the for them and the for me Which is really the for money and for love is that when you have less time to do everything How do you choose like, you know, like I need to make money to support my family I need to keep my career afloat, you know Like doing a lot of these side projects that have nothing to do with lettering are wonderful for me And I get a lot of fulfillment of them, but they're not actually the kind of things that bring client work in I'm not doing a lot of for fun artwork projects on the side, which do help generate a lot of new client work And one of the things that I did to sort of cope with this is I've always been really interested in making things That are useful like I want to be a useful person I I'm like the same person that I was when I was a toddler where like I was just like let me know what I can do to please you And which you know works against me sometimes and works for me other times But I really love making things that have a real-world application out in the world and even stuff that I've made that doesn't necessarily seem like that at first Has like a deep undercurrent of it So daily drop cap was one of my first like big personal projects that I did and it's one of the only Like artwork focused side projects that I've done because you can say that everything else is like kind of artwork focused because it's a graphic design project but for this project I drew 12 I drew the alphabet 12 times in a row which led to you know 300 plus individual pieces of artwork and I asked people you know to watch along as I was creating them I made one every single day Except when I was traveling or on the weekends though. I did try to catch up for a while there I didn't work out But the reason why this prop the thing that really motivated me about this project Wasn't even necessarily the artwork itself It was the premise of why the artwork was being created which was to make stuff that people could use So like the whole premise of daily drop cap which not a lot of people really like know in retrospect now Was that I made these drop caps and then gave you the copy paste image codes that you can actually put them on your blog And I said you know if you have a site that is not like you know some major commercial website Just feel free to use this all you want And I think that's what got a lot of people to be really excited about it at first because it wasn't just like a Pretty-making project it was something that was trying to you know give back to the internet and It ended up giving back to me in a really big way because it brought so much work my way which I Like would always be a hope but it's one of those things. I hadn't even thought about you know like I'm like Oh, of course I want more work But who knew this thing of that was basically like the world's best promotional tool would bring work in because at the time I didn't think about it as a promotional tool I think the best way to make a promo is to just make stuff and Not expect it to come back to you because ultimately the the making it itself needs to be satisfying enough in case it doesn't come back to You but this really came back to me in a big way So these are covers that I did with penguin books where they hired me to do 26 covers As a part of a series called penguin drop caps and I will take a breath now Feel really amped right now. I had like a decaf coffee, which I think they lied about but Each of these was really you know It was really interesting and different and I love doing book covers because I feel like one of the things I also struggle with as a creative is like how to make work that feels like it has a permanence to it and Books are one of the few things where you know that like these aren't just like giveaways These aren't just posters that are getting pasted up and torn down at the end of a season They're things that people are choosing to bring into their lives or choosing to bring into someone else's life And hopefully they can exist for quite some time and worst case They're donated to lovely places like the New York public or the yes as a public library and Another area where I found this like you know desire to be usefulness really fulfilled is in logotype work So I the kind of logo work that I'm interested in doing is this sort of like brand Revision work and part of that is just because of practical reasons I don't plan to set up a branding studio Like I don't get off on brand extension stuff because I have like total creative ADD and can't be on a project for more than three months And I think like you know Well a lot of designers get into design and get really excited about having like these you know Ten clients that they work with forever Like that is honestly the scariest and most like annoying sounding thing in the entire world to me So I like even clients that I love I'm like, you know like we're not married to each other Right like we could just hang out like every Christmas party or something and With this sort of work this logo revision work I'm able to do like use my very kind of specialized skills and things that I'm interested in and Do work for these clients that I feel is like incredibly practical and useful and I didn't really sort of like understand how much I love this until MailChimp came to me for the first time which is the the first brand revise I did and And After I had posted this to my site I was like you know what a bunch of people are not going to understand that I actually Redid their logo and didn't just do it in the first place I should post a before and after and kind of talk through the steps of why I did it I was super communicative with the client as I was working on it And I think that transparency like really helped and just being transparent about the process that I went through to get to the final and About how every decision I was making was actually just really about legibility and practicality All of a sudden it like blew a bunch of people's minds open about like wait people think about this kind of stuff Because we take that for granted as like crazy type nerds that you know focus on details all the time that a lot of people just forget that fonts don't just apperate into the universe and Sort of like pulling the curtain back and showing people how the process was which is something that not every designer feels comfortable doing But I feel very comfortable doing It made clients want to work with me more Because they would feel empowered over the process of working with me like they wouldn't feel like they didn't understand where the money went or they didn't understand where my time went and What I really like to think about is like every time that I do a project like this I have done a bunch of them at this point like I end up kind of going through and showing people like Here's all the stuff That's really screwy about your logo and then they can't unsee it and they kind of have to hire me to do the whole thing But none of it is like Subjective really like some of it is subjective, but most of it is Really just like do you want nerds with pitchforks to write articles on FASCO about you? Nope, okay, then let me do this thing to your logo Nerds with pitchforks as a threat is really really effective with clients I will tell you like anytime a client wants you to do something and you're like don't force my hand Just tell them that someone's gonna write an angry article about them on the internet because like that thing that they're asking is really wrong And they're like well, let's we'll we'll think we'll whiteboard it for a little while and see if we still want to do it But anyway like what I really love about kind of showing how the how the sausage gets made in this process Is that I really like the idea that clients can become advocates for the kind of work that we do because It can seem like so intense and so academic and so nerdy But if I can explain to a client like everything that I've gone through to get to that final point to the To the final logo to the point that when they're out at a party and someone goes really is your logo that much better Like you know was it worth that whole process of hiring someone else like and redoing all your signs and recutting that thing out of aluminum and blah They can say oh my god You don't even know like there was this thing in the e that was just like crazy You know and they can kind of regurgitate a bunch of that nerd speak that I gave to them and Feel really confident in the work that I've performed and also the fact that they've hired me in the first place And that all that does is sort of advocate for our profession as a whole which I'm really into The most recent one I did which I got to work with Jim Parkinson on aka he did the original logo and I did the update Southern Living recently hired me To redo their masthead, which is not live yet. So this is total under the radar right now So please no instas and They you know wanted to do something that was really adhered to the history of it But worked with their new updated branding that they're doing which they're totally revising the whole magazine So the one on the top is Jim's original logo from the 90s And then the new one is below and I went through a whole mess of iterations to get to this point This is just one page from one round But it was you know these sorts of projects are really interesting because they're really anyone that works with type knows that there's 1,000 variables that go into making one letter look one way or another and Being able to sort of explore all those on a really micro basis and but still have this constraint of like it has to Look like how it kind of has to look how it currently looks Makes it so that you don't get overwhelmed with the possibilities and I really love constraints So one of the things that you can deal with though is like feelings of uselessness if you're not doing useless work But one of the biggest ways that this can really affect you is when projects get killed, which is an inevitable so Projects get killed. It's just a thing that happens You just kind of have to you can't be in love with anything that you work on and what I've sort of realized and I'll talk a Little bit about this is that you know Like if what really gets you off is that final piece and seeing it up on a billboard and seeing it on television Seeing whatever you are going to be disappointed more often than not because whether if someone messes with your art if Someone decides to change directions last minute if the project it gets scrapped entirely it can be really really upsetting and It's something that you deal with a lot more the further along in your career You are when the projects that you're working on have like a much higher There's more stuff at stake where you know and the timelines are longer and more further out So I could be working on something for four months And then it's not meant to debut for two years and then I find out six months before It's about to go live that they decided to scrap the whole project and that kind of stuff can really grade on you over time So here's a sampling of projects that have been killed over time This was my first big kill. It was very upsetting I got hired fresh out of school to do some work for what was at the time gyro worldwide which is an ad agency in Philly I don't know what they're called now. I forget they changed their name a couple times But they had been they had they do a bunch of like cool industry stuff including setting up the art in the age Which they do that like root liquor that you can buy it by right and all kinds of stuff And they were gonna put put out this at this alcohol called rock and rye Which is like an old prohibition kind of mixer thing and I could not have been more stoked I was so excited about this and I went so many rounds with them and these were the two final pieces that I presented and Then I heard back like maybe four months later that they had scrapped it and went with like a really Normal label-looking design and I was like I'm so sad And then I didn't show it forever because I don't think I had permission to show it But it's been like 11 years, so I'm gonna say it's okay now I Did some ads for glade that I was like pretty happy with how these turned out But the thing that was so crushing about how this project ended was that the art director that I worked with Accused me of phoning it in on the finals and I was they were like We just aren't happy with the level of finish that Jessica did for the project and I was just like I was so upset because I was like you guys haven't expressed any Upsetness over the course of this whole project and now you're gonna say that and after the fact you're like I didn't even like you in the first place, and I'm just like okay fine. Whatever I Did some work for pottery barn that was supposed to be on pillows totally killed still like it This was one of my saddest Killed projects because I loved it so much and I still I showed all the time I did some work for AmEx and this was gonna be on like some New York Times billboard, and they totally killed it last minute Anytime you work for cool people just expected to never happen So I did this pattern for for Burton that they were gonna use on ski gloves and on the on a snowboard And then they were like I never mind And I was like cool Sometimes stuff doesn't even make it past the sketch stage So I did a bunch of like early sketched logo explorations for nice and easy based on a thing that they Which is the hair color company Like a direction they were thinking about taking the brand and it was all about like using these big swashes And I had to draw a bunch of swashes and stuff like that But it went a couple rounds then just totally died at the gate. So whatever But one of the bigger projects that I did recently that got killed that I was real upset about but that it Was still like a totally fine project was I I did a ton of work for the Oscars last year That did not make it into the show But this project like I feel like most of the time when you're working on projects And they get killed the process of working with it on it and with the people that you're working with is still so enjoyable that you like walk away going like well That's a shame because I'm really proud of that work But ultimately that was still fun and I'm glad you paid me blah blah blah and So for this project I worked with the academy and their creative team and they were just so awesome to work with and What happened was they hired an agency that did a bunch of exploratory work with like digital brush pens like super quick in like a slide deck and The creative director was like oh, hey like this is like the approved direction, but I know it could be a lot better Could you take a few stabs at like helping us make the the Typography better and I was like yeah, are you kidding awesome like a hundred percent? I'm in and then over the course of this too He was like and you know like if you want to go to the show like I could probably get you tickets I guess everybody's got to go once and I was like yep. That's a thing that everybody's got to do So I was like aha, I will go to the Oscars sounds great So I got to go to the Oscars last year, which was pretty surreal I threw this direction in as like a random because I was like everybody loves pretty scripts So worst case maybe they'll like that Which they did which was great, but then they killed it the morning of the Oscars. So whatever Which was great because I accidentally spent $400 on a haircut Because I asked a friend of mine in LA like I need to get my hair done before the Oscars Can you recommend someone she's like oh you should go to my old hairdresser? She's a little expensive, but you know like she does a really good job And she does a bunch of people for the show and I was like okay And I went and it was just like a total 45 minute run of the mill haircut And I went to check out and it was $400 and I was like Like could not have anticipated that because I get expensive haircuts either $90 so a little bit expensive I was like okay like 150 bucks. I can cough it up for the Oscars, but woof. It was that was a lot And then when when I when I got an email from the creative director that morning being like Oh, I know we told you that thing was going to be on the program, but it won't be there I don't want you to be surprised if you like show up and it's not there and I'm like great But this was all still really fun to do and I mean honestly I had such a good experience working with them that I would have kept going forever This was what was supposed to be on the program And then ultimately they killed it because they felt like it didn't match the rest of the the show And if you look at the campaign from last year and hyperanalyze the lettering that they ended up using You will notice that it is the original sketch that was presented in the slide deck to them And what ended up happening is it's very designed by like, you know how things are that's very Designed by committee and people just got more comfortable Seeing a certain piece of artwork over time and there's just so many cooks in the kitchen that they You know, we're just like whatever it's approved like we're we're comfortable with what we know versus what we don't know But they did use a little bit of my art on a stamp that they sent out for the voting and also the word vote For voting for the nominees. So that was pretty cool. So fancy people got to see my art, but not most people Anyway, so what I've sort of discovered through like having just dozens upon dozens of things killed over the years Is that um the journey to the end of a project really is as important if not more important than the destination And when I talk to designers and creatives of all types or even just like anybody anybody that's in college anybody That's in high school and they're thinking about what they want to do for a living Um, I really try to get them to focus on like don't think about What the end result is or what the title is or what the accolades are or you know, what your linkedin resume says Think about what your actual day to day life is in that profession Because that's what you're shooting for like what you're shooting for is to really like like 80 percent of your life Uh, because if we're going to be real like none of us are retiring ever, you know, like I mean, we'll probably like downgrade the amount of stuff that we're doing But based on like the fact that we're all going to live until we're like 125 years old Um, I'm going to say that most of us are going to be working a huge chunk of our lives And it would be really upsetting if we all just sort of stood back and said like, oh cool Well, I hate my job, but it doesn't matter because like, you know 60 years down the line I'll be able to take 10 years to myself to like be okay with that um And I really like the idea of like spending most of my time doing something that I enjoy and of course There's there's stuff that you do on a day-to-day basis that you're it's just out of duty and not out of love but um If I can just make sure a majority of my day is filled with something that I love to do I think that I mean, it doesn't matter if it never gets printed. It just matters that I love that process And sort of understanding like what needs to be a part of that process has just taken time You know, like I've I've given a lot of talks about what my process actually is here's like kind of a snapshot Um, but one of the things that I find funny is like every service ever and every like, uh, design focused Startup is always trying to find ways to make your process faster. You know life. Let's do this more efficiently Let's automate this part of the process here. Try this brush here. Try this whatever And I couldn't be less interested like I'm always looking for ways to make my process slower Um, if anybody has a shortcut do never tell it to me I don't want to know it because I want to take twice as long as you are taking to do that thing Because I like doing the thing. It's very meditative. It's important to me I know how long it takes me to do the thing that I'm doing Um, and there's not like, you know, racing to the end is not a goal Like I think that and that's like a general life advice thing, you know, like it's really cool having babies Don't necessarily race to that point. Like, you know, you've got a whole life of of baby having time It's cool. Well, at least, you know, a significant chunk of time in your 20s and 30s and 40s But yeah, I mean we're always just looking to take off these boxes of like I have to race to the top of my career I have to like be, you know, I have to get to the top of my profession. I want all the accolades. I want all the awards I want to be like, you know at the top of the mountain But the issue is like the faster you get to the top of the mountain the longer you have to spend at the top of the mountain And it's much easier to be on a slow upward climb to the top of the mountain than to be like standing on the top of the mountain Pushing all the other people off of the top of the mountain Uh, not that you're pushing people off, but you know it gets crowded up there. I don't know Longevity is hard So one of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is is taking myself more seriously. This is a very california thing. I think I'm in therapy now. I don't know many people who aren't If you're not I recommend it. It's very useful for so many things But I I just remember getting out of art school and just being like I can't believe these fine artists Bluh, you know, whatever because I just I when I was in school I like wanted a way to draw all day But I felt like all of my feelings were super dumb and immature and you know, I got into school somehow making paintings about my boyfriend like this This is an actual this was my senior project in my senior year of high school Uh, just so you guys know But I was a very sensitive kid and you know, I like sat around all day listening to smashing pumpkins and like painting stars on my ceiling and thinking I was super deep and um And then once I got to art school and saw that like people were making real projects about real topics that were like incredibly like thought provoking and whatever I immediately like totally shut down my ability to make fine art at all I was just like clearly i'm a A crazy person or just like a silly a silly little girl and my feelings aren't valid And it's taken a long time to kind of feel like I can make art that's self expressive again and give myself permission to do that Really like I had been doing it once I've discovered Graphic design as like a medium because it felt like like as long as I could be like sarcastic or like, you know Make something useful or whatever. I could inject my feelings into that thing Uh, so probably the most feelingsy thing I made uh in school was I made a board game about divorce called pack your baggage It was my senior project. My parents are divorced. I don't know who's who else's parents are divorced. Whoo. Yeah That's it's a great thing. I guess for our parents eventually when they're finally over it. Um, but Which they are now it's cool. Everybody's happy whatever But when I I made this I was like I had just gotten out of the real thick of it was still kind of in the real thick of it And I didn't really make this as like a catharsis project I wanted to just make something that I felt like I could Have a sense of humor about that I felt was really close to me You know like that's something that I felt like I had enough experience to like throw at so that I didn't feel like People would be like way to make a project about a thing. You know nothing about um But I'll give a little brief explanation It worked like the game of life except instead of choosing between career and college you chose between mom and dad um And like the game of life you would get these like chance moments that would affect your gameplay so One of the chance moments was you chose like your parents personality from a deck of cards And then depending on what your parent was like it affected how How many negative baggage points you would earn when getting caught doing things? So like if you had the like alcoholic parent And got caught drinking in high school, it would be kind of like zeroed out, you know, it's like Whatever, of course that was gonna happen. Uh, but If you had the like super religious parent and you got caught fucking your teacher or something Then that was like, you know triple points or something But what was great was that these points worked in both directions So like if you did a thing to get caught which was you rebelling against your parents divorce and trying to be like an adult person I should probably not be cursing on your prog library thing, but I'm sorry or a san francisco public library Sorry, I'm a next new yorker and I can't I can't erase it from my my mouth um But if you caught your parents doing things you could collect guilt money to pay for therapy to take away baggage so And you got these two blame it on divorce cards, which like I don't know if anybody here ever was like If you guys weren't divorced, I would have done that awful thing that I did Uh, but you get like one maybe two times in your whole life that you can do that So you save it for something really good like That's not like I cheated on a test card. That's like I got knocked up after prom card Which I did not do I only have one child and she is too prom did not happen two years ago. Um Although maybe it didn't uh um Anyway, and then so now, uh, you know making self expressive work. I feel like it's really important and um, it's been hard for me to Want to make stuff that's like really topical about stuff that I'm feeling about without feeling like I'm Maybe even taking advantage of a situation or doing something that isn't going to have an impact or or doing something That's just kind of like following the trend of what everyone else is doing Um, so, you know, a lot of people made comments after, you know, the election basically saying like man This is great news for artists and comedians, you know Who are going to be able to have just a wealth of things to work from for the next four years Which, you know, my initial thought was like, oh like it just that was like not the thought that I wanted to have And I had a hard time even thinking about making art anything related to what's going on right now until recently um But what I sort of realized is that like you don't need to give yourself You don't need permission to make work, you know, like and and I'll talk a little bit more about this in a second, but like any excuse to just like Get you creating and doing the thing that you feel like you were put on this earth for is good And like don't feel like Outside forces need to limit you in what that thing is or outside perceptions And I think that we all struggle with that our whole lives is like I want to do this thing But what will people think of me if I do that thing? And like the people that have real success in the world are those just the ones that go like I don't care I'ma do this thing and they just keep going um, and Certainly like do that as long as whatever you're doing isn't hurting people Um, but it's really important to like give yourself permission to sort of do what feels right in the moment I used to do a ton of letterpress printing when I lived in new york because I had this relationship with the arm letterpress Um in williamsburg, which is an awesome space and run by a really rad dude Who's also the major type appreciator dan morris, um, and it's how I met nick german who's doing a work stuff that you guys Shall take but um, I didn't really understand how important letterpressing was like in my creative process mostly because having access to a space and being able to sort of order prints Or order plates really easily And you know like have an idea on a monday and print by a friday what it did was it like took the resistance between Me making something and me making something real and like really Turned that resistance down like suddenly it was like pretty inexpensive for me to do it I didn't feel like I had to have these like insane justifications for making a poster Um, and once that got taken away like once I moved over to san francisco. I know that there's resources here I know there's san francisco, uh center for the book Um, but I just never did it like I never formed those relationships And what happened was every time that I wanted to make a print I would have all these like very business related considerations about it of just like Oh, well, I really want to make this thing into art But then if I'm going to make it if I'm going to sell it then I have to make sure that I print x amount So that I don't have to sell it for a jillion dollars And then if I'm going to print x amount then I have to You know have this whole inventory and then if I'm going to have the a thousand prints lying around Then I should make something that's going to really sell because I can't make weird art because no one's going to buy weird Art And then all of a sudden all that that did was I went from like making stuff constantly to not making anything at all um So the like resistance between Like just having an idea and putting it out there and making it into a real physical object became so intense That I just decided like I was just too afraid to make anything And so recently I purchased a vander cook and I know that it's like, you know, the It's easy for me to la la la away the money of um the fact that I actually bought a letterpress But it essentially is like a large chunk of uh money that has been like the best therapy I've ever paid for because all of a sudden I just started making stuff again You know like just any random idea like I wrote a woman today who I liked a quote that she wrote on twitter about Uh, like the quote was like now seems like a really good Like it seems like the only way to live right now is to give no fucks and a whole lot of dams And I was like that is such a good quote and so I wrote her and I was like I'm going to make that into a poster Are you cool with that? Um, she was like, yeah do it but like previous me might have said like, oh, I really want to do that Uh, but it's going to be really expensive. I should only do it if I'm going to do like a limited edition run But then if I'm going to do a limited edition it has to be X amount of money blah blah blah And all that stuff is just like prevents me from actually making the artwork in the first place And now that I have a lot less resistance to like making things It's opened up the world to me to actually Suddenly want to make art for fun again, which is huge, you know, like when you go from making all of your art for clients and making uh, you know Educational projects and websites for fun until like finally making art for fun again It's like I feel like a like a 22 year old. It's like, I mean, I'm just happy to be here mode You know, like which I feel like if the more I need more of that in my life And I think we all kind of do And what I sort of realized like through all this and through like paying attention to what everyone's dealing with Is that if making something gives you the strength to get out of bed. That's enough You know, like do not feel like everything that you make needs to change the world because it doesn't If anything it just needs to get you motivated to be a better person You know, like that's one of the things that is really important Is just like making sure that you feel like you're capable of taking on the world and that you're going to be out There and be a positive force for other people to be positive forces And like this reaction is so toxic like I love Liz lemon. I feel like she's my spirit animal but I also Like this like inner cynic of me like anytime I find myself like rolling my eyes at someone's project because I'm like I don't think they donated enough of the proceeds to a charity to justify making it for a charity or whatever Like anytime I have that reaction where I'm just like, oh, that person's being a dick Um, I have to just think like whatever they're they're doing their thing. No judgment Everybody's allowed to do their thing And a quote that is like a totally generic airplane quote that really sticks with me And that I use all the time when I think about like whether or not the work that I'm doing is selfish or whether Like I should justify my actions or whether like how am I going to move forward When things are really stressful is put on your oxygen mask before helping others And this is really I mean, I think self-care is really huge and san francisco is thankfully a place that is very supportive of it But really really think about it a lot when you're making a work and don't feel like work that you're doing even if it's like To sell toothpaste or whatever Is Like not worth it if you're getting something out of that process and that you're excited to go to work and make that thing Because I think what we're all kind of working with right now is like, how do we move forward? Like how do I how do I go out into the world and and behave like a normal human when like clearly it's not normal times And just know that like you need to be your best self in order to Exist in this world and help other people be their best selves And you might not be the person that is on the front lines But you can help enable that person by encouraging them or doing whatever it is that you're going to do to like Get them to move forward So yeah, so that is uh, that is all I would say um I have found that While therapy has been incredibly helpful for dealing with a lot of things What I really needed all along was just like permission to make stuff For me again and and to not judge whatever it is that i'm doing You know not allow myself to judge myself or allow other people to judge me for the actions that i'm making as long as Whatever i'm doing is going to help me become a better person for my family and for the world So thank you We have some time for questions. First of all, thank you, Jessica. Thanks Uh, does anyone have One question just one Everyone's very shy. Okay. We got first Hello, um, just wondering uh over the course of your career how Like where you get your inspiration from and how that's changed and whether like living in new york or living in san francisco Like the impact that has on your work So the new york san francisco thing the main issue with that is being surrounded by a bunch of crazy workaholics in new york Like allows you to be it like basically enables you to be a crazy workaholic um because if everyone around you is bragging about like Like uh, complain bragging about how they worked on a saturday. You're like, oh, yeah, I work every saturday, too Like totally, um, and it just changed like the work culture around you really does affect you So like I have a lot of sympathy for people that live in places where They just don't have a ton of super creative people around them that are really passionate about what they're doing because It is really hard to keep that up on your own for a long period of time So what I would say is I have a lot of really motivated people around me But people keep like much more regular human hours here Which has been incredibly helpful for me in my life And I think I really needed it like I needed to kind of take it down a notch and not Rely on high level like high volume output and instead rely on high high quality output um But I do miss being a part a direct part of the culture that I Really most of my work goes towards like a lot of my clients are still in new york because of publishing being centered there And advertising uh on a more global level being centered there Um, so I do miss being in like a an area where you can't spit without hitting a graphic designer um In terms of inspiration, I think like Inspiration is really different than influence, you know, like I think a lot of people when they ask what your inspirations are They're actually asking what your influences are And I don't think my influences have changed all that much over time Like I'm still inspired by like vintage typography and like Uh people like chris ware and things like that and but I'm more like influenced by people around me than anything like I am a total like Uh sponge of the energy of other people that I hang out with and like sharing spaces with creative people Like I share a space with eric mrinovic Like it can be like really daunting when other when you see other people doing a ton of work That's really awesome and creative, but it can also be really inspiring Um, so I think like I try to get influence from a lot of other things and inspiration from a lot of things But on individual projects more often than not it's like the content of the project itself that I draw the most like influence and inspiration from Uh because really like and that's why I have a hard time doing work that isn't client work because I Basically like need the brief in order to move forward and giving myself a brief is much harder And it's it's more rare that I have a desire to make artwork Just for like because I feel this fire under me to make a specific thing Then it is to have something stumble into my inbox and we go I already know what i'm going to do for that, you know But yeah What else? Hi jessica. Thank you for sharing your time with us. Where do you fall in? With the street signs the street corner signs in san francisco going from all caps to initial caps Um To be honest, I have not noticed But no, I uh, I'm all for a title case sign signage. I feel like you know, there's more It's easier to perceive letter differences in lower case. So I would say as far as legibility. Maybe it's a good move. I don't know. It's one of those things I'm not a legibility expert on on on signage. So It's hard to know like what everyone would benefit most by And my brother actually sent me speaking of like legibility stuff my my brother who is not an art person sent me like one of those like Fonts really matter like forward emails where like everything looks like the c word or whatever And one of the things one of the images in this email was this pizza company And it said like something pizzas and like I had to wait for it. I was like What is this supposed to read as that? I'm not reading it as And it was like met like someone was reading saying that you should read it as like the n word In plural and I was like that's just a script z Like you know people just this is you would only read it as that if you've literally never seen a script z in your entire life If that you would read that as a lowercase g and so like I think legibility and stuff like that is so interesting because it does shift like depending on people's exposure so like while You know universally they say like typesetting books in A serif typeface, you know is the most legible and easy to read and most invisible and therefore doesn't affect your reading experience Is it going to be that way forever? I don't know like there's certainly people that Are going like can't read a script lowercase z or like read a More calligraphic p the one where the the bowl doesn't connect Like that was meant to look like an n or something and I was like that's just a script p that person just never saw a script p before and so Yeah, I mean it's like it's hard to it's hard to judge it not from the nerd standpoint instead of the The random person standpoint I have a question about um, I guess being a female designer In I think what it seems like generally an agency type of ours And I think how do you think motherhood has affected that and also being able to Play with like career time management and also being able to do all the things that you love And all that here's where we get into the darkness Um So I love being a mother. It's amazing. Um, I Like I'm so obsessed with my family life And I feel like now like the things that I struggle with more have to do with like I never had to worry about work and career Like that was always my safe zone ever since I was a little kid Like I was a total compartmentalizer With like my priorities in my life and I would just lean super heavily On academic work or on artwork or whatever whenever I had problems going on in other parts of my life And this is the first time in my life where like my whole personal life is good, you know, like Usually there's like some random person that's like really just Making me have meltdowns in the middle of the week and I can I can bury myself in work to to deal with that But everything has been so outstanding, you know in terms of personal life I haven't had the identity shift that a lot of Women experience where they can't separate themselves from or from being a mother I or like feel that motherhood takes over their person. Um, that's just has not been my experience. Um Part of it might just be because I'm like kind of a like Goldfish crackers. They're fine. Whatever, you know, like I'm like a little looser than a lot of like the more intense You know bay area style moms Um Which I can I have many of them are in my friend posse who like, you know order special formula from sweden because they found out It's the best or whatever and I'm just like, uh, it's not available at wall greens. I'm you know, whatever So so like the transition Was hard in a lot of ways, but it was not hard in terms of my personal identity The way that it is Extremely hard is that I never felt like I had any issues being a woman in the design field Like never like I would get interviewed all the time Being like what's it like to be like a woman in like a male dominated field? Do you feel like there's sexism whatever and I I must have been like one of the lucky ones that like never really dealt with Like overt sexism and really felt like More than anything people were just like police come sit at the table. It's all dudes here like we need you You know and I felt like I was given a lot of opportunities specifically because I was a woman and I think certain things like public speaking I think that You know I get a lot of public speaking requests like part of it is because I have a lot of experience But part of it is because there's no conference. That's like, you know what we need more male voices You know and so there's like a lot of things Where I feel like being a woman has really been an advantage, you know Like and I know that not everyone has that experience because I never worked at an ad agency I never worked at like one of those very You know a more misogynistic environment like I've always worked in these very You know inclusive environments But the thing that had that happened is like once I got into my 30s and I don't think this is necessarily even motherhood specific It just has to do with like everyone's life The life course is that all of a sudden it became a lot more awkward to have intense friendships with men Because everybody started getting married and everybody had a lot less time because they were managing family or doing whatever So it's not often that I'm like getting random drinks with a male colleague on a tuesday Because maybe that person has you know, who knows whose partner is jealous Who knows who would be like putting the other person out who has a kid at home or whatever And so I have found that my social group has become more segregated along gender lines like hugely since being in my My late 20s and early 30s. So if you would have asked me when I was like 26 Like if I thought being a woman affected my Career, I'd be like, are you kidding? Like it's been all rainbows because of being a woman It's awesome. Like as long as you drink whiskey and can go to the bar and hang out. You're good But I will say that like I'm lucky and that I'm surrounded by a lot of really awesome really motivated Power women, but I know that that's not the case for everyone So I could see how if you were in a market where A lot of the leadership positions are occupied by men and that's just Like it seems immovable and that's going to be forever that like over time You start losing those people as friends and start surrounding yourself with their wives And like not that everybody's not an awesome human to hang out with but you're not going to get the same career Benefit as being around other people in leadership positions within an industry So I would say that that had the biggest effect and I think the being a parent thing the issue is that the You know sort of expectations around being like a designer That's really prolific is based on the schedule of like a 25 year old unencumbered childless person who's extremely healthy so uh, I you know, I honestly It I you would have to be like just throwing piles of money on me to get me to work on a saturday Because it's so much more like it's it takes too much away from my life to spend that much time away from my child And it's too much to negotiate with my husband to like be like Oh, by the way, your work you're on full parent duty all weekend because I have this project that i'm mildly excited about That doesn't pay very much that I want to work on So it's your priorities do shift like you only say yes to those sort of like Working late into the evening projects or working on the weekend projects If it's really something that you want to do whether it's for the money or because it's a really really cool project Um And that over time I think can have a huge impact on your work You know like you have to be much more on top of it You have to be really into like promoting yourself and being out there And that's something that I never really had to do because I was always such a high volume Outputter that like the work itself was the promotion But now that I'm Outputting at a much lower volume. I have to remind people like hey just so you know still available for work and When I you know when I moved to oakland Everyone assumed that I was working from home now or and I still have a studio here in the city when I had my daughter I had art directors emailing me When she was 11 months old 12 months old after I had already been back at work for seven months Saying I don't know if you're back at work yet But I have a project that might be good for you and I just don't hear any stories of men dealing with that Like I don't know any men who a year into having a child someone's emailing them saying like I don't know if you're available for work, but I have a project that might be good for you But I'm assuming that you might be at home taking care of your child You know like that's just not a thing and I think it's something that is more specific to women that work for themselves than for women that Have a company that they run and have employees or are an employee somewhere else So there's just not a lot of us I mean if you really think about people that are out in the world that are vocal about being parents That are working for themselves. There's a handful. I mean it's very small So there there have definitely been some hiccups and that's why the internet does not know about this child Like my facebook page knows about this child, but the internet at large does not know about it And it's just because I don't feel like dealing with the fallout that I had with my daughter And it's been really hard to wrap my head around that because I'm just such a big sharer Like I want to tell everyone everything that's going on in my life all the time But it's really to me It's not worth the repercussions of doing it again And that's it's a hard pill to swallow because I want to be out there advocating for women and talking about how How difficult it is, but what I have found it I'm sure other people that have dealt with hardships in their life Have dealt with this like no matter what it is whether it's like not saying a child is a hardship But you know it affects your life But like if you deal with something Everyone wants to hear about your story after they know you're over it You know like no one wants to hear about like no client wants to hear like oh, I'm currently dealing with schizophrenia But please hire me to do stuff Like they want to hear about how you've battled with something and that you're totally fine and healthy and everything's cool And now you have this really great story about how you like overcame this hardship But like parenting is hard because you're never overcoming it. You're always in the middle of it So like it's it's a hard thing to talk about without it really affecting people's perception of your availability and what kind of work You're open to doing So yeah Okay, thank you very much Jessica Thanks you guys for coming