 So, thanks everybody for coming, hopefully coming in can just get off the back. All right, so fourth arts and work panel, fashion. So I'm going to just, we're just going to jump right in and we will let the slideshow guide us. So we'll do introductions first, right? And then as we always do, we'll talk about what the job really is and all of the things it entails and then how a young person wanting to get into it would do that. So I'll prompt you as we go and we can definitely have conversations along the way, but that's our friend. Very cool. And I think, oh there we go. All right, Rachel Hartman. Hi everyone, I'm Rachel. Is that okay from the sound? You can also pick it up too if you don't want to. Okay, I just don't want you to hear my heavy breathing. Hopefully this works. Okay, I'm Rachel. I am a brand manager currently for an apparel company called Original Favorites, but it was really fun going back to see how you end up places. I studied apparel design at CSU, but I really got into fashion. Can I just go into it? Yeah, so this is okay. You have five minutes or so. Five minutes. Okay, so I'm from Colorado, so I love to snowboard. So in my day, in my day, when I was like 15, it was cool to wear tall tees and go skiing. So I'd make my friends custom tall tees and I was like, this is so fun. I think I want to do this for the rest of my life. And then I studied fashion at CSU and so this is my senior collection. It's not quite tall tees, not snowboarding gear. So I kind of made a huge pivot. Kind of my amazing teachers would just open up the world of creativity to what is inspiring you, and that's what you've got to kind of follow. So even though I made tall tees, I was always inspired by something else, not necessarily a tall tee. Anyway, so yeah, this is my senior collection, which I made in college. And then after this, I went on to intern for designer in New York. I worked for them for a little bit. They make, the designer was called Jonathan Simchai. He does really awesome ready to wear evening wear, occasionally red carpet wear. You could totally look him up online. It's so cool. Even if formal wear isn't your thing, we all are creative people. It's tons to get inspired by from people who do something really well. Yeah, so then came back and now a contributing sort of my role at original favorites is hilarious for a small team. They hired me because they're, oh, you're a fashion girl, you know how to produce clothes. We're starting a new company and we need somebody who can help us with all of the apparel production. So I started helping them with apparel, but it really has now grown into a role of, I don't know how to say this, we do all of, I do all of the digital marketing for this company now and sort of head creative direction. You can just jump ahead. Yeah, absolutely. So like, perfect. So yeah, this is the company now. Sort of how do you show the same items seasonally? We don't change products. We don't run a fall campaign. We don't do a spring campaign. It's really about changing the dynamic and to fit our customers. We have to have like sort of for customer anthropologists and studying digitally. What are they responding to? What looks are they responding to? Do they like a casual look? Do they like the formal look? Do they like the setting? Do they like these colors? It's a lot and the internet and your customers will tell you everything digitally. So I kind of went from being a physical creative to now very much studying people's habits with our brand digitally. So it's cool and it's fun to develop the creative vision from that. So yeah, this was, I'm trying to go back here. I thought that Jonathan Tsumka is really fun. So this was backstage on New York Fashion Week. I got to work a few fashion weeks, which was awesome. You can see this is beautiful, elegant, apparel, and that absolutely translates to t-shirts. Even though they're different items, sort of the same attention to detail. How do you make something look luxurious? How do you make something have a tangible feel through the camera that it's awesome? That's really what I've been working on developing over the past few years. Yeah, fun models. This is cool. This is Kylie Jenner. You guys know Kylie Jenner. Yeah, she was wearing that. It's cool. You can see the jacket in the sample room. You can see how they were merchandising it for the show. And then we gave it to Kylie to wear. And yeah, she wore it to the fashion show that year. So kind of full circle. Cool stuff. Yeah. Great. Awesome. And we'll have more questions. We'll come back around for you. All right. Okay, can you guys hear me okay? So my name is Mona Lucero. I'm a Denver fashion designer. I've been doing this for quite some time. We are celebrating 30 years in business. We started in about 1993. And we actually, I've been designing longer than that. I started off learning how to sew from my mother. So there's a lineage there of creative people in my family. I've been, I went to school at FIT in New York. I always say schooling is one of the most important things that you can do. And this is the beginning of that. So congratulations on starting and learning from people who already know what they're doing or at least have gone through their own process. I have been designing my own line. I've worked for other companies. I currently have my own business, excuse me, which includes pretty much everything. We do everything. We do, we create the garments. We do the patterns. We do the social media. We take the photos. We also work with other people. We do collaborate. Everything's pretty much been done here in Denver. And I started off in art. My first love was wanting to be an artist. And as time went on, I decided I wasn't sure about whether I could make a living as an artist. Now, if I were to go backwards, I might have a different way of seeing it. But back then, I was like, my stuff was whimsical. My paintings and drawings were whimsical. And I felt like I was out of sync with what the other people were doing. And I wasn't sure I was going to be able to sell it. So I started thinking, I knew I wanted to be creative. I knew that's where the direction I was going to be going. I always loved clothes. I started to think about fashion because I had the background with my mother and other people in the family being interested in fashion. I started looking at fashion designers, learning about them, then went to school. So I have a bachelor's in fine arts and associates in fashion design. My line currently is mostly women's wear, but I do some men's wear. Much of it is from scratch. I also do some up style. And I'm influenced by art in a lot of different ways. Currently, you'll see some of the, that's okay. So if you look at these right here, some of the fabrics are my artwork on the scarves and different fabrics. And so I'm always using art concepts. Sometimes it's just art, but there's also found objects on certain things. I've done a variety of things in the business. I've done a retail store a couple of times, retail store, sold wholesale to other stores, done custom design, done fashion costume design. And sometimes people will just come to me with an interesting idea and I'm willing to try it. And it's interesting because every project that I take on and as an individual, they eventually become a part of the line. So I encourage everybody here to think openly about where your next step is and it'll take you into some really interesting places. Many of the people I went to school with, they got jobs working in the garment industry, working for big companies. And it's great, you know, it's great to be able to say and be able to learn from that. But one thing that's an advantage of working in a small company is that you learn every aspect of the garment industry. And it can be very exciting. It's not just creating the garments, but the whole entire package just as you were saying earlier. Marketing and merchandising and social media is another aspect that's very creative, particularly these days. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Sorry. First of all, fantastic work guys. Love it. The knitted vests are incredible. Love those. I'm Roland Gonzalez. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator. Currently I'm working at the North Face. And I've been working there for about a year and a half. I work on their on-mountain youth and their accessories as well. Just kind of wanted to cover up from Los Angeles. I used to do freelance for a while. And then after that, I got hired at Nike. Up there, I was a design assist and I was able to work in the Nike Kids Department, Nike SB Court, and kind of just travel throughout the company working on that. Sorry, the first slide. Oh yeah. Good. I was going to show. So really what I want to talk about is just the idea of what we do as a graphic designer in general. Creating capsules is something that we like to do as a storytelling component within art. And me, as an illustrator, I really like to try to create unique characters. Something this is specifically for Nike Kids. That's something that kids could relate to and really be able to just have that overall story. The second slide that I have is for Nike Court. So this was a chance that I had to work on tennis product. A lot of this is just different graphic aesthetic. So we look at whether or not it's going to be on the front chest or whether or not it's going to be on the back. And how branding kind of plays a part in this. So we take what you would look at like your normal swoosh and we create different aesthetics overall. So then just kind of thinking about how that is culturally. The actual, I guess the assignment here was to play into the French open. So just looking at the way that the tower plays with the swoosh and just create some sense of like art deco design. And then looking at the different colorways for that. So always fun to work into. And then for SB, it was a lot of just trying to be unique. These are designs that weren't necessarily related to skating in general, but it was like, you know, what could we do that would be fun and just kind of pop for the consumer in overall. And then so now at the North Face, really what I do right now is I look at the logos and I try to determine what the best usage is for the consumer. And there's a lot of different ways that you guys can do this. It's playing a size, scale, application. These three general, I mean, you're looking at some, you know, more street wear components, which would be like far left of just having that logo be so loud and proud. And then playing within and like the center is like an embroidery patch, which gives it a different aesthetic. And that's an idea or something that you actually have to look into overall as a graphic designer. And then just other logo play. So there's always going to be a chance to be able to create some kind of logo using pattern fills, tying for the rest of product. And just how does that look across as a brand. So always be versatile. I really like that option of graphic design. And then so thinking about execution, this is kind of like the main part I wanted to get out as a graphic designer is that you should always think about things holistically. How does it work with the inline apparel? What is the actual application? So is it embroidered? Or is it a screen print? How does that embroidery actually come to life? There are so like if you look at the hat here, we have a sand stitch embroidery with a direct embroidery and something like that just gives it extra elevation. And to be aware of that as a graphic designer is really important because it doesn't just create a flat object. It allows a consumer to interact with the product a little bit more. And then thinking about like accessories. How does our branding show up a little bit differently, whether it's a screen print or a woven label. In this case, I'm a beanie a woven label. But yeah, just always trying to be very precise and thoughtful. And then when it comes down to color, of course, this is a job of the graphic designer as well. Whenever we have a graphic completed, we always look at it through the lens of color in general. We will have to take that logo and figure out what the best color is going to be for it on what bodies it's going to be. And it's a lot of fun and just playful in general. For me, a lot of what I do is about finding inspiration in my daily life. And I really like to get outside and travel. I'm a big road tripper. I just recently this year, I hit four national parks. This one was of Canyonlands. And next to it is just textural elements that I thought would be great to use within graphic design. So finding inspiration in your daily life is definitely one of the most important things that you can do because it keeps you motivated to just kind of continue to create and then playing around. I mean, it's like I take those images and I think about it through the lens of art in general. How could paint mimic the idea of texture and then creating mountains out of that specific type of texture? Playing around is just one aspect of my job that I think I really do enjoy. Not everything that you create does get made into a graphic and does get put onto a t-shirt, but it's a process that you go through that's consistent and that you should just get into enjoying. And then you sketch. And then, I mean, really, when I sketch, it's a lot of just free form. What do I think is going to be fun? And then kind of creating new and different types of characters or landscapes or just things that I think would be interesting. And then you take those and you sketch some more. So it's actually like none of this stuff that you'll see from this slide and the next slide are things that have actually made it. But it's important to know that that process is still there. I really love the process of like linoleum cutting and just paint in general. And how do I start to use some of that just standard art and design of the elements and principles in my design and my daily work? It's fun. So I never feel bad about the things that don't make it into lines or into the apparel. But I am excited about the things that I get to make. And then experiment. So this is all back into the same realm of just like playing and finding inspiration. But experimenting to me within graphic design really is about finding aspects that could lead to innovative design. And for like this was an experiment that I did that was primarily taking a solid object, freezing it and capturing those bubbles to see if there's a texture that I could play with within an actual graphic. This does have a graphic with it. I just can't share it with you. So that's always another thing with like the companies that I've worked for. You don't always get a chance to show it until it comes out. So unfortunately, there's that. But this is coming soon. Coming soon, exactly. But this is a really fun one for me. And just kind of like a little note, you know, to have fun, just play around, take pictures of things that you think look cool. Use them in artwork and just try to create designs of their fun. Yeah, none of it's wasted. Awesome. All right. So I'm just going to go back to our front. There we go. All right. So I'll just stay a little closer to this microphone. Sorry, they're not moving as much. So yeah, I think that the first question that I have for you all is like, what do you actually do every day? Right? And Roland, I think I actually want to start with you because you're a graphic designer, but you work in fashion, right? So your day is going to be different. Well, so I mean, day to day, ideally what I do, I mean, there's a lot of production involved in a company job when it comes to graphic design. So it depends. We kind of have two different seasons. As a graphic designer, we have our big, heavy graphic design season, our creative season is what I really think of it as where I gather content and we create concepts. And, you know, most of that is, I mean, that could go on for two months, maybe just concepting, ideating. And then the second part of it is the production. So once we've actually settled on concepts that we want to do, we actually put it together. So that is a day-to-day component. I'm an illustrator eight hours a day at the very least. That could be tech packs or schematics. And schematics are basically what a graphic is and how do I send it to a factory. So for the factory to understand it, it's color chips, it's scale, it's what type of application. You have to look through strike offs or like handfield of the graphics once they finally come back in. You put all of that down and then it gets sent out. So there's a lot of work that's put into just creating one single graphic and it getting blown out across many different types of apparel. And those capsule ones are kind of like important because they take a lot more time. The capsules that are created, it's usually three or four graphics. And just putting the graphics together probably take a month and a half. And then the production artwork for it probably takes another month. But it's just daily busy. But it's fun. I mean, it is rewarding. At the end of the day, you end up seeing all of your artwork on product that gets out there and reaches a consumer. There's a lot of mindful messaging involved and on graphic design as well. So what stories are getting sent to the consumer, how do we want to engage with them is really important. So we take that time as well. Think about the meaning and how people read it and what they understand. Exactly. And we meet as a team. We always try to just get together and meetings are really important. I mean, it's collaboration. So that's a big one. And does the clothing and the graphic, are they coming up in parallel or do make specific graphics for specific clothing or how does that? It's a little bit of both. I mean, I think there are times when apparel has been made that we're able to just add additional stories too. And it depends on where you're working. And I don't want to say too specifically about where I work currently. But yeah, sometimes we just want to put a story out when we have a t-shirt. And that's great. But other times there are those extra storytelling components where a piece of apparel is created and it needs the extra accent or the energy. Or maybe it's something that needs to look a little bit more, I don't know, official or sleek. And these are things that we look at as graphic designers to determine what kind of graphics get put on what apparel. So it's not always the same thing across everything. And I think that that's always important because it's not the same mundane new challenge. Awesome. Cool. Thank you. Rachel, why don't you go next since you're right there? Yes. What was the question? So it's just sort of like the everyday, you know, not a standard day, but kind of like, what are the things that you're doing? I'm sorry. I was so in following that story. Yes. I would say ours. I work for a small team. So it's a little less structured probably than your experience. I would love that structure, but it's cool. We kind of get to make it ourselves. So creative happens maybe and creative for us is photo shoots, product styling, product storytelling. You know, we sell the same products, but how do you sort of reinvent them accurately to people who are looking for them? How do you show them that they are looking for your stuff? So about every, I think I said, I actually say three months. So every three months, kind of what's the next vibe, if you will, for our ads? When you're on Instagram, you see an ad, what's the creative behind that and what messaging will you respond to? When someone clicks on the ad, what's the website presenting? How does that accurately present based on what they were looking for? And so yeah, every three months, we kind of just keep reiterating and just putting out assets and deliverables. And yeah, actually, that's pretty consistent, but that's what I would say. Okay, cool. Great. Yeah. Edmona, I mean, you mentioned doing all the things, right? Sorry, this is a little bit short. It's a hard one to answer just because depending on what your project is, but I would say about twice a year, we put out a new collection and sometimes smaller things in between. But how I start a collection is I start thinking about what it is that I want and what I'm wearing. A lot of designers do this at base, what their needs are and what their desires are. And I'll start with maybe one design, one idea, and then work around that idea, add things to that idea. So a couple years ago, I started being interested. I've always worn ponchos. I was looking backwards and I went, oh, wow, okay, I've been wearing ponchos for quite some time now. I thought it was a new idea a couple years ago, but it just kind of came into my head again. I was like, okay, ponchos are it. This is what everybody wants to be wearing right now. That's what I thought because that's what I wanted to wear. And so I put together a collection that was Western New Mexico base, which is where my family is from originally, or at least a couple generations back. And so in order to put that collection together, I looked through previous patterns and made another pattern that I based that particular poncho on and looked through other designs, which is common. If you look at designers who've been doing it for a while, you'll find that they come back to ideas over and over again. They change them up. Sometimes they'll do the same design 20 years later. But so say, for instance, I was looking through skirts, so he took a skirt that had been doing really well in the past. And I'm like, is it time for the to bring the skirt back? And I did. And it's doing well, but we changed the fabrics, changed the look a little bit here and there, styled it a little differently, introduced it at a fashion show. And it was a big success. People loved the way it was styled, the way it looked. And it was in keeping with a lot of the Western look that people had been doing, but with a twist. So I always tell people, especially younger people when they're starting out, what differentiates you? And that's what I always remember about my line. When I'm doing my line, what makes the Mon Lucero line different from anyone else? And that's hard to do, because there's a lot of people out there doing what we want to do. So I work on that, get the patterns together, make sure I have fabrics, order fabrics. If I don't have them, make sure I have sewers available, which is not easy here in Denver, because sewing is one of those things that people just don't do anymore. So much in the United States. I'm a small company, so I'm not going to give somebody hundreds of pieces. But I'll get everything cut. I'll usually cut it myself. We used to have a cutter that I could take it to, but now we do it ourselves. Cut it, take it to the sewers, hopefully sew it quickly and they do it well. And we get it back into the studio. In the meantime, we're letting people know that we have new designs. We do fashion shows, social media, miscellaneous things to get people interested, occasionally send out information to past customers and say, we've got some new things in, invite them to the studio, had a store up until I closed it in April of 2021. 2020 was a killer. So now I'm in the studio, but the thing about fashion, I mean, the definition of fashion is that it's always changing. And the way we sell fashion, the way we market fashion is also changing. And interestingly, I'm doing much better in my studio than I was in my retail shop in 2020. So there's just a variety of things in a typical fashion designer's life. It's constantly changing. And it's just like any entrepreneur, you talk about changing your hats from hour to hour, basically. Wow. Using your creativity all around. Exactly. Cool. Awesome. So the last question I have, and then we can take some questions and we can talk about other things too, is if someone were looking to get into it, if you were looking to get into it right now, what could your path be? Because I know they're always different, right? What would you say, perhaps study or what are personal skills that are really important that you should develop? Things like that. So I don't know who wants to start. I'm over it. I'm over it. Gosh. Well, I do, I felt like fashion was kind of always the nucleus for me. So anyway, I could be around fashion. So I would intern for, I should say they actually now own the company work for as well, but they were a men's streetwear skewer brand. And that was in fashion. So I thought that was cool. And then New York was fashion fashion. I've interned for skewer companies. Just any way I could be involved in the industry, I think really gave me a great sense of what I really enjoyed. I would say try to pursue the things that you do feel like you're good at. Not that you don't have to do things you're bad at. That's with every job. But I did feel like I kept coming back to creative direction and sort of overall identity for things and collections and pieces I'd create. And now that's what I do professionally. And I love it. So I'd say kind of like have this nucleus take as many opportunities as you can around it. And it'll give you a really well, well rounded experience, well rounded sort of contribution. And how did you find those opportunities? Yeah, that's a great in the classified ads anymore. Oh, no, this stuff like this, this is awesome. And I'm trying to think I'd go to trade shows. Anyway, I could at times that was through school, sometimes it'd be through professional people that my parents knew that or if I met you somewhere, I would be like, I'm gonna please I want to come to your studio networking. Yeah, that's called networking. Yeah. Yeah, just kind of anywhere I could please on my way in. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Love that. Hope not. Totally second that as well. Just network, like network a lot. When I started, I didn't know where I was going with my career whatsoever. I left school and I started to freelance and eventually found my way back to school only to realize that that was the most important part of it for me. Meeting all of these people that have different aspects of life, collaborating with them, making the connections and keeping the connections I think are really important because you never really know who's going where. And it's just okay to be authentic and be friends and really just gain those networking connections. But I got really lucky. I was at school and I was networking around with AIGA a lot. And I was able to obtain a couple of internships through AIGA, which kind of put me in the experience of agency life a little bit. There was a agency out of Los Angeles called London Los Angeles. And they had a couple of like fairly small businesses that they were creating marketing campaigns for. But it gave me the first taste of what creative direction is. And I love it. I love it so much. I mean, I honestly, I think it's a goal of mine in the future anyways. As of right now, graphic design is that stepping point for me. Sorry to interrupt because you've both mentioned that. What is creative direction? Creative direction is, for me at least, I do think that this evolves a little bit from place to place. But it's having that ability to tell a full holistic story like that, like I was talking about earlier. Really being able to consider how the design interacts with you as a consumer, how it makes you feel. What are the points that I want to hit? Or what are the important statements? Looking at that and being able to map it out from anything from a t-shirt down to a cell phone cover or whatever it is, whatever the product line might be. And it doesn't even necessarily have to be about product. It could just be about statements that you want to make. And I think that that's a really important part to think about. And so for me, being able to direct some of that, the style or the overall output of what the components are of the actual, I guess, project is what I consider creative direction. And yeah, so that's kind of like the future goal. But I wouldn't be there if I didn't network and I didn't come to events like this or creative mornings or anything where it seems like a community of people are getting together to discuss something that I'm really interested in. I think when you're young and you want to start doing something, just lean into your interests. Be okay with feeling really uncomfortable. Like really uncomfortable. Some things are going to scare you, but that's going to be okay because it'll only help you grow at the end. And like I said, I got really lucky. So when I went back to community college, there was a friend of mine who reached out about a opportunity to go hear a company speak, and that was Nike. They were promoting a program that they were piloting. That was an apprenticeship program that they had never done before. They asked for portfolios and 250 people ended up submitting their portfolios. 50 of those portfolios or designers got to be in a design competition with each other and just work on briefs. So they had a segmented out into sections of four that were working on color and material, apparel design, footwear design, and graphic design. And I got to showcase all of the breadth of skills that I had. And luckily enough, 13 people ended up getting the six month program and I was one of those people. And from there, I ended up getting hired full time. And the rest was really kind of history. So it wouldn't have happened if I didn't feel uncomfortable. If I didn't put myself in a state of just trusting that this is the process. But it's definitely not for the faint of heart, but it is for the designers. I mean, get at it. And approach that creatively too, right? I mean, it's not just getting someone your business card. There's all different ways to network and become a part of things. Totally, totally. I mean, I still have goals of having a gallery show myself, just as an artist. I don't think that that's going to go away anytime soon. Like I plan on having this creative life for my whole life. So, yeah. Cool. Thanks. I agree with everything you guys just said. It's perfect. I wanted the things that I'm saying to you. Okay, so I went to school with some people who were working in the industry in a long time ago in like the probably the 50s and 60s, and maybe even earlier than that. So my teachers were old school. And one of the things they taught me was you need to be willing to work. And my draping teacher was like, yeah, big designers used to just have to pick up the pins. They did that for a year before they got to touch a piece of fabric. So you heard all these scary stories, right? But there is a lot of truth in that. And if you want to do this for a long time, you will work. You'll work hard. You might make a splash very quickly because you're the new thing and you're talented. And maybe you made a nice collection. But it's beyond that. It's going to have to go beyond that. If you really want to do this, whether it's a fashion designer or artist or anything that's creative, you're going to be doing it for a while. You're going to be working hard. And it's one of the loneliest things that you can do. It can be glamorous. I see you're smiling over there. There's some glamour to it, right? So whenever I do a fashion show, I remember the first fashion show I did, people were coming up to me and they're like, I love your stuff. Oh, my God. And I'm like, awesome, I'm going to make some money. And I didn't. Nobody bought anything. It felt great to get the compliments. But I knew that that was just the beginning of my journey. For me to sell something, I had to really work hard to get those people to actually put out money. When people buy your stuff, that is meaningful. So remember that. It's wonderful to get compliments. It's wonderful to get press. But when somebody takes money out of their wallet, what they worked for, that's the biggest compliment of all. And afterwards, when they wear it or they're using it to hang it on their wall and they come back to you and tell you how happy they are that they still have it, that means a lot. But it also means a lot of work. First thing, go to school. Go to school, figure it out. Even if it's not university, go to school, learn your craft, learn the tools, learn what people have done before you. Go to work for people who will teach you and you will be successful. But you have to have it in your heart. It has to be passion. If it's not passion for you, find something else because fashion is hard. But it's rewarding. But it's rewarding. It's wonderful. You will love it. If you love it, oh my god, the rewards are amazing. Meet people. I mean, even right now, look at all the people we're going to meet tonight. Not everybody has that. This is what creativity gives us. It is. It just gives and gives and gives. And it's so worthwhile, but it's not going to pay you all the time. So if you love it, ask yourself, do you really want to keep going with it? And you'll be so happy at the end of your life. You're going to be like, I did this and I didn't take the narrow path. I took this broad path and it's going to be awesome for you guys. I'm glad you guys are here. Yeah. You know, I think just to a little side note, all the time and work that we put into making our garments, and we had that one glamorous night, which was amazing. But I think that's the percentage, right? We had one night and we worked for five months for it. Right. I mean, I've missed so many friends who are having this. Friends who are doing this really fun party and I'm like, I got to finish this project. And I see photos later. I'm like, I missed out on that. Oh well. But there'll be other opportunities. I would also say there's so much you learn when you're making a garment, like the details. And when you know a seam doesn't match up, or when you know you took the quick, lazy way out, it's so transformative to really put your heart and soul and then see something. And those are skills you can carry throughout, right? You did have one night of glamour, but you learned when you made those garments. That was the work. Yeah. And I'm going to compare it to what you were saying, Roland, where you make all this work and some of it ends up on a garment, right? Not all of it, but you had to do all the work to get this, right? The ratio is definitely a lot less than you would think. But the output that we go through is intense. There's a lot of work that just sits on the table at the end of the day. But what I do get out there, I'm happy about. I'm proud of. I'm definitely excited. And I think that's something to look forward to at the end of the day, to every aspiring graphic designer. That's a good thing to look forward to. But you can always return to it, too, if you want to. I was going to say it's the poncho. It's funny because I kind of knew that, but I took a riding class a few years ago, and the teacher was talking about how he actually took snippets of what he wrote and would put in a new story. And I'm like, really? That's so interesting. It's like, yeah, you can always recycle whatever you've done. And I'm like, that's right. And I'm never worried about that from writing, but that's so cool. I love that. Yep. It's definitely very similar. I'm sure we have some questions in the audience. Yes. Mary, you guys talk about how sometimes your success doesn't happen as fast. Was there a time, a point of time where you just felt like giving up? And if there was, how did you bring yourself back up? Yes, there definitely was. I didn't get into the industry until I was 25. I'm 32. I was just about done before I went back to community college, and that was the turning point. That's kind of what got me out of it. I forced myself to put myself in the uncomfortable spot and make it past that hurdle, even though I wasn't sure where it would go. And I really had no idea what I was going to do. I never thought that I would work for Nike or that I would work for the North Face. And I'm here. So as proof, if it gets hard, you just keep going. And as long as you're passionate and you enjoy what you're doing, I think at the end of the day, it'll be worth it. Success doesn't come easy at all. But it is worth it. I'm smiling because that is such a good question. And I felt so much success early on that when I was applying for jobs after New York, I was like, I had a killer senior collection. I worked fashion week in New York. Why isn't anyone hiring me? I didn't have a job in the industry for three years. I had to do whatever I could to make money. And it was not creative, fun work that I thought I was entitled to because of my experience. And I was like, you know, maybe it's just not for me. I had to humble myself again and remind myself how important it is to start wherever I can the way it was earlier. And it was just a very important lesson for me. So I appreciate that question. It is a really good question. I have never, ever wanted to stop. But I have had moments where I have cried. And I've been felt down. And I've had, I've ever, you know, it's been an economy. Sometimes the economy hits sometimes. And I remember at one point I had a store. It was in 2008. And I couldn't sell something for $12. It was bad. And people were coming in and just walking through the store days because the economy was so bad. And at one point I thought, I think I lost my mojo. Maybe people don't want what I have. Maybe I'm not, maybe what I'm doing isn't interesting to them anymore. I've lost it. And then I think it was the next year in Denver, the Denver Art Museum was hosting the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit. And they invited some designers to bring in their own clothing and accessories to sell in the gift shop. And I created a bag based on one of the famous dresses that Yves Saint Laurent did. And I sold those bags off the hook. I couldn't keep them in stock. And I went, nope, it wasn't my mojo. But it took that to make me feel good about what I was doing again. So there will be some ups and downs. But for me, I've never thought, I don't ever want to do this again. Never, ever. And I'm sure you're here because you guys are creative. And anytime you feel that, sit down and draw, do whatever it is that you do creatively and it'll bring you back to where you were, where you started from, where your heart is. Just be creative again, and don't let it stop you. Whatever that is, it'll still take you to the place where you need to be. I think what I'm hearing too is knowing that there's those hard parts, and that they happen to everybody, right? Because I think sometimes that's the thing is you're like, oh, it's me, right? Oh yeah. But it's not. You can't get how it goes. Because it's what you create, it's what you do. All right, more questions. If they see you learn from school, they probably wouldn't have to learn outside of school. Outside of school? Yeah. Yeah, what is it that's like, you know, you're talking about education and they agree, but what is it that you learn there that? Mine's incredibly specific. So I didn't know how to sew when I went into college and I studied fashion. Come on. But I learned how to sew in school and no one taught me beforehand. I probably wouldn't have learned this huge passion of mine because I just would have been like, well, just maybe being a accountant and do a practical skill and never learn it. I would have, but it was an amazing, tangible time to learn a skill I was very curious and inspired by. So that was good. I would say, so for me, when I speak of school, I'm thinking of an all-around university experience and that's just my point of view. The reason why I think a university is so good is because you're learning not just about fashion. You are required to take humanities classes and maybe science classes and a variety of other things. And if design is what you're interested in, if you look at some of the best known designers, some of the most successful designers in the world, they're very highly educated. They know what they're talking about. They talk about history of politics and things like that. They know about stuff. And if you don't get higher education, again, this is my opinion and I could be wrong about it because things are always changing, but higher education takes you into other thought processes and fashion continues to grow and grow and grow, not just address. It's way more than that. And that's what's so exciting about it, especially going into the future. It's changing dramatically right now as we speak. Yeah, I think that's extremely interesting because I resonate with it, but I don't have a university degree. I think that that reason for schooling. But you have a higher education. You went to school in higher education. Right. And for me, the thing that I think I got out of school the most was the standard education on the software that I needed to understand to be able to execute design on my own, which is evolved. I think that so many people nowadays can find that education that I'm talking about, just the software on their own. And there are plenty of self-starters that have done that. That's true. And I'm not saying that you can't learn all everything in a university on your own. It's just easier, I think, because you're forced to do it all. Right. And I do agree with that. I think when I left school the first time, I had grabbed those skill sets. And that's what I focused on for my freelance portion. It was just really nailing how to use Illustrator and Photoshop and InDesign and just constantly doing it. But if I hadn't gone to school, I wouldn't have figured that out on my own, because it just at the time, it wasn't really the same way. I think YouTube videos of all of the different types of steps and quick keys and commands and things that you can do on Illustrator now is fantastic. And even to this day, I'll occasionally peruse on YouTube to find something new. But I wouldn't have the direct understanding of the software the way that I do now. And I can just run laps in it. It's something that I think the formal, just the plan of somebody giving me structure and saying, hey, you need to practice this one thing over and over and over again until you're good at it. It really gave me an upper hand. When I went back to school, when I started to work at Nike, I mean, I was doing things that I didn't realize are harder than I guess I work on it. There are people in the companies that just don't know how to do it. So yeah, I mean, go for the real lessons and the real details and the skills like sewing or anything that is structured, I think is really great. The other thing too that I got from going to school was I got to know the experiences of my teachers, their history and what they learned. And then seeing the other students, I mean, it brings down your ego quite a bit when you see how amazing other people are. I remember just being at FIT and going, oh my god, what did you just make? Are you kidding me? I'm like, you should be teaching this class. There were some incredibly talented and I mean, some of them knew how to make couture dresses and we were like pretty young, we're still learning all that stuff. And I remember one of my fellow students, he was making bridal dresses that were incredible. And so you learn from watching other people too, you're the fellow students. And I mean, I personally think one of the best things was going, wow, I am not the only talented person here. There's hundreds of them, thousands of them. It's good for you to learn that. And to echo your point, totally in this collaborative environment that is school, you do get to learn from your peers. You get feedback from incredibly talented people in the moment. And you don't get to take many risks professionally sometimes. School is an amazing place to take creative risks and get feedback from talented creative people into different things. So I'm totally to echo your point. Not that I'm a designer, but also I learned discipline in school. I wanted to do everything and when I had those deadlines that forced me to finish, then I finished. Oh yeah, criticism. Critiques, getting bad feedback, good feedback, get stronger, like you take it better. There's corporate critiques, but they're just not the same. I loved showing something that I had no idea how it would get responded to in a classroom and then have everybody talk about it in a different way. It was so fun. I mean, I miss that a lot. I mean, she's open critiques. Let's just do it. Yeah. Cool. Well, we're just about at time. Are there any other questions? Yeah. We've all shown to come as creators. What would you say it was like light all the at that. Just like I don't know where this idea just came to be. Just start this whole hiring exam. Remember, I heard you talk about the thing you love to do and when you started that, design the same raw press. First, I just want to hear more about that. Are there more moments like that that I don't understand? Is that your favorite one? Well, for me, I have noticed that there's usually one idea in every collection that is the hit. If I'm lucky, maybe a two or three are doing well, but one is the hit. I can't think of anything in particular right offhand that I would say that stands out right this very moment, but I will say this and that is my ideas a lot of times come to me when I'm doing something that's completely unrelated to fashion. So sometimes I'm waking up and I'm like just a couple days ago, I was like, Hannah, I noticing like usually I have tons of ideas recently, not so much. All of a sudden I woke up and I was like, whoa, like they were just flowing through me. And so what I do is I take my voice recorder from my app and I just start saying it fast because they'll go away really fast. It's like, was I dreaming about it? I don't know, but ideas are constantly flowing. If you're creative, I'm sure you'll have tons of them and there'll be moments when you recognize almost automatically that's the idea. And sometimes it's the simple ones that really are going to be the biggest hit. You can come up with like, oh, and then they do this, that'd be awesome. The simple idea and if you love it, usually other people love it. If you like it, other people like it. If you don't like it so much, people don't like it so much. You're the one who knows. So whatever you're feeling inside, you're the one who makes it happen or it flows through you. I'm not sure what happens, but it can come in many different ways. My feeling is fantastic, by the way, when it hits you and you get that like, oh, that's so cool. I love that feeling and it happens for me on the ideation concept phase where I finally come up with a little idea and it could be so simple. Something to your point that I'm surprised it hasn't been thought of, but it gets me so energized to just create a graphic in a new way. And that's why I like to play. I like to do things like that where it's just like, I find something that looks like, that kind of looks like something else. And I'm like, that's definitely going to be something else. I'm going to make this graphic. It's going to be totally representative of how I have it in my head. And I get super powered up about that. I can't wait. In the next few months, stuff of mine will start coming out and I'm so pumped because I had several of those moments and I wish I could share them, but I can't. But it is, it's as easy as just getting out there and like looking at things constantly and then when something does give you that energy, you just move on it. Just keep going. It's so fun. Yeah. You can create that motivation, but you just have to keep making stuff anyways. I know. And even with us will be like, well, what if the color assortment looks different? So just, yeah, I totally agree with you just playing with these iterations and just keep iterating and iterating and then you're like, oh my gosh. It's so much different than when it started, but you just make tiny little changes along the way just to kind of play around. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, I think that's it. If you guys have other questions, I think. Oh, sorry. Somebody have a question? Oh, I guess two of these shortcuts to understanding factor inside. Most people to talk to in like the local way or basic locations to make sure I understand factor inside as soon as possible. What do you what do you want to make? Well, okay. You don't have to give us like super like looking for a blurry shot. Okay. I can get like that in a structure and things like that. Okay. And also just like the most ethical ways that you've seen this time. It also part of the mission in here. What is your background right now? Do you know how to sew and what do you do? I sort of know how to sew. It's kind of rough and definitely I'm taking shortcuts on here. But there are a highness. My background is more painting. I work a lot in digital art. It's just I guess that's an answer. Do you anticipate who you're going to be selling to? What is your, what do you anticipate your demographic will be? I guess like demographics. I'm putting them in spots. No, is it a good question? You don't have to have know everything. I just ask it. Oh, okay. Okay. So I would say one way to start is to go to the design Denver design incubator and start talking to some people there. There are people who have been in the industry for a long time and they will, you can learn to sew. You can learn to do, you can learn pattern making there. You can start asking them questions. I would start there because it's difficult for me to answer that question in just a couple of minutes. But that's where I would start because there are people there who know as much as I do or more and add more. I know there's a couple of people who are like, okay, you really know what you're talking about. So I would start there, call them, go in and talk to them, sign up for some classes and start asking a lot of questions. It's called Denver design incubator. And I think Kettie Vanny is still the director, but I'm not sure. But Denver design incubator. And I can help you find it again too. We were supposed to have Rebecca Tishler with us who did a lot of work with them back in the day, but she's not here. But we can talk more about that too. That's a great resource to start. Anybody else have any thoughts on that? I mean, I think that that's a great example just as a shortcut go somewhere where you know that they have the experience and the breadth of knowledge that you're looking for and the connections. When I was doing freelance, I was primarily doing footwork and it was like running around trying to find places to get something made and just talking to people in the manufacturing or the factory area or the fashion district in Los Angeles and putting immersing myself and going from door to door to just find people who I could talk to. I mean, I ended up meeting screen printers and mostly screen printers because of graphics. I think it's important to just get out there, do the footwork. And if you know who you want to meet or you know what the overall end product is, then there's an area. You just kind of have to go there. And that is a super good answer because you will have to learn. There are so many different things that go into just embroidering a product. But if you go to the screen printers, go to the embroiderers and ask them questions, they'll give you general information about what they need from you. And then you can start going backwards trying to figure out what you need to do to come back to them and have it made. Yeah. One of my favorite experiences as an upcoming graphic designer is I went to a regular print shop. This is like paper print when people still did that. And the guy there just kind of gave me all of the tools that I needed to know in what I was making. And I was just making business cards at the time. But he gave me a full booklet of different types of print executions and things that they were capable of doing cost sheets. I mean, he really spelt it out for me and it made it even more achievable to get what I wanted as an end result. Because before then, I really had no idea what I wanted on this business card. After I was like, oh, there's foil and sandpaper and all kinds of different types of applications on this thing. And I wouldn't have known that without the guy who was the expert in that field. And you can also work for those companies too. Like if the embroidery aspect is super important to you, you can work for people who do embroidery or work for a screen printer and you learn those processes on their dime. They're paying you to learn basically. All right. Well, I think if you guys have more questions, we probably have a couple more minutes and we can informally talk. But I think we're done. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you all for being here. I love this because you know what she does. I was like this. You're like, I'm going to take cover for everything. I like which looks great. Okay, that was awesome. No, it was real good.