Starting a Career in Illustration

Listen to moderator Jonathan Bartlett and panelists Dave Curtis, Christina Chung and Jeremy Leung as they offer a range of …

Order the best illustration at the best price for your business, your company, or to resell them on other sites that pay for the service at more expensive prices, earning the difference:

✔️Click Here to Quick and economical illustration.

kate i know you’re listening but not talking i guess i’m we’re not going to see all the little boxes for the participants because i’m not seeing that correct the boxes only show up i believe if someone’s talking i guess i’m not going to see kate i know you’re listening but not talking whoa i guess i’m we’re not going to see all the little boxes for he participating really good i’m not seeing that oh that’s the delay on your end okay i think that’s the live delay yeah yeah yeah that means it’s work it says it’s live on youtube now just so you i had to go live and now we’re broadcasting so awesome you’re good to go i’m gonna mute myself all right cool um it’s a little weird to not see any of you that are in here so i’m assuming you’re watching and listening um it looks like we have almost 60 people so we’ll wait i’ll give it another two three minutes before we really get going but um but yeah we’ll get started real soon and uh looking forward to this as as are all our awesome panelists don’t speak yet no you can’t go ahead please okay i’ll wait that’s all right let me see i’m gonna mute myself for two minutes nobody go anywhere okay cool this is great this is how these things go i’m like clicking around and seeing stuff i see okay okay okay um yeah we we do see the chat messages i think people are asking for work the crowd while we wait um all right cool um lindsay is it all right that we begin i’m going to take that as a yes and she will alright she’ll probably type that to me you should start jonathan yeah all right cool all right this is great um welcome everybody it’s uh like i said it’s it’s kind of funny to be doing this without staring out at a room full of your faces but these are our circumstances right now and that’s all right it’s kind of weird to be staring out at a screen of just my peers um without seeing even little boxes for all of you but that’s okay too what that means though is that this is gonna probably be really uh intimate conversation it’s gonna be really honest and really open i think because we feel like we’re just hanging out with friends talking about business talking about our careers um so that’s exciting uh and like everybody already knows here but and i guess this is inconsequential to all of you that are guests or attendees i guess this is being live streamed to youtube right now but none of you and none of your faces are on it so there’s no there’s no problem with that so but anyway um if you have friends out there that aren’t able to get in send them to youtube and they can watch all this okay so uh to officially begin let me throw up my screen briefly it’s a little uh it’s not as formal as i was hoping i had a bit of a technical difficulty earlier but we’re gonna do the best we can for just a hot second so um we’re here because of the society of illustrators that’s what’s behind me we wish we could be in the building but we can and even though we can’t we’re still able to bring this to you which we’re really proud of um i am jonathan bartlett i’m an illustrator an educator and a board member at the society of illustrators it’s a real privilege it’s a privilege to host this talk um business careers helping people it’s something i’m passionate about it’s something all of our panelists are passionate about as is the society but first we really do need to thank them i want to make sure that you realize that the society’s mission is not um is to not only promote the art of illustration to preserve its history but to offer its services to the welfare to to uh making the community a better place and helping illustrators so that’s our goal that’s our goal today and i know that’s the goal for the society every day to help um so just a quick thank you to uh our esteemed director annel miller who is our fearless leader our president tim o’brien and really everybody that works at the society but i especially want to say thank you to kate firetag and to lindsay nichols who are here helping and do so much for everybody um you are all muted right now so not not my not the attendees but like i said all of you all that all of the attendees are muted and i cannot see you so if you have questions um i ask that you just type them out in the q a uh chat bar i think there’s a difference between a q a and a chat if you can put them in the q a i will see them and i’ll hopefully address them and try to get to everything so that’s how we’ll do it um you know we’re all trying to figure this out as we go so uh bear with us and i think it’s gonna be good okay uh thank you so i meant to show this this is part of me thanks dave um anyway let me introduce our panelists uh i’ll begin with christina so christina chung is a taiwanese hong konger american illustrator raised between seattle and singapore and currently lives here in brooklyn new york she graduated from the pratt institute with a bfa in communication design and a concentration in illustration her work focuses on intricacies color and symbolism and draws inspiration from the natural world and powerful storytelling which is on display in these beautiful images um excuse me christina can you tell everybody how long ago did you graduate um i graduated in 2015. okay yeah so not not terribly long ago um which is good this is the point we want to be able to tap into that knowledge uh following christina here we have dave um dave curtis he was a graduate he’s a graduate from university of the arts illustration program back in 2013 so a little bit longer ago but afterwards he moved to new york city to begin his illustration career and booked his end book design career excuse me um in 2016 he began working at harpercollins children’s books was that your first children’s book uh was that your first design job no no no it’s uh the third okay okay right right so that’s your current that’s where you are now so anyway you work with harper collins in the children’s book department where he now designs and art directs young adult book covers all the while he’s never stopped drawing and he still does freelance illustration and last year was accepted in the society’s society’s annual exhibit uh as both an illustrator and art director which is very cool and congratulations dude that’s awesome dave’s work amazing i don’t know uh i’m not seeing any uh yeah whatever it doesn’t matter it’s still on the the society of illustrators splash page for me all right how about you are you guys seeing other stuff no we’re just seeing the cover page all right well um cool i’m just going to keep talking even though you’re not seeing anything other than society stuff well then you know what let’s just get out of here we don’t need to do this we’re back everybody can see us hello all right but anyway to third sir last but not least is jeremy jeremy lung um he’s an editorial illustrator and art director as well so two of our two of our guests our panelists are both illustrators and art directors which was deliberate that’s a very important uh thing we can talk about uh but he was originally from toronto also now lives in brooklyn but he describes his work by saying using flowing lines and textures the work represents an array of human emotions and stories he graduated in 2015 from ocad and like i said now lives in brooklyn so welcome all of us all of you we’re gonna start this uh just so for everybody that’s listening we’re gonna start this with a a bit of a guided conversation and then i will um do my best to kind of tap into your questions and whatever is happening in the chat room or the chat windows and stuff okay um okay so welcome cool thanks for being here at the three of you uh i’m kind of struggling between like talking formally as if i’m in front of a room of people and just being like okay you guys this is wonderful yeah um but really like uh i’m super happy that you guys are willing to contribute your time to this and i’m looking forward to hearing what you had to say so starting a career in illustration that’s what we’re talking about all of the all of our guests are listening because you i’m assuming that either about to graduate or they’re about to start a career in illustration or have recently started or maybe they’ve been doing it for a long time um but they’re all looking for new perspectives so all of those things no matter what you are how far you are in or not into your career it’s all great in fact that’s actually kind of the first lesson i want to point out in that is to say you never stop learning it doesn’t matter if i’ve been doing this for 13 years jeremy’s been doing it for five or six christina in five or six days a little bit longer there’s always learning always trying to be better um and so whether it’s uh you know you’re a seasoned pro or you’re new at this it’s kind of like we’re all in the same boat but that said the challenges and we know this that the challenges that await you right after graduation or right when you start are numerous and they’re ever changing we know that those next steps can be very overwhelming especially right now which we’ll hopefully try to talk about although we’re all on the same boat with that but you know you have this mix of hopes of expectations of fears that all at the same time are happening it’s like how do i navigate this what do i do well before i get into just letting these three run rampant telling us all amazing stuff they know i just want to say it’s the way you navigate it is knowledge okay knowledge is gonna be your sherpa it’s gonna get you to the top of the mountain it’s gonna guide you okay but what is knowledge knowledge is information plus experience and so that’s why i’m so psyched about this because today we have three amazing illustrators artists designers that are here to offer you both of those things so after this we’re all gonna be uh just like be able to hit the ground running and make amazing careers happen all right okay so you guys so imagine him well go ahead i said imagine everyone just laughed just then because they would have i know right can i get a laugh or something no thanks guys i appreciate the support all right so let’s start it out in the beginning like let’s take it back um i’m asking you three to put yourself in the headspace of graduating okay and i don’t know how you want to figure this out who wants to talk first or whatnot but um you know put yourself in that headspace what was your approach to planning for the next steps did you get the wheels turning before you finished school or you like oh my gosh i just have to graduate and then i’ll figure it out you know that’s what people are thinking right now can you put yourself in those shoes again and kind of talk us through what you were going through at that time hey christina you go ahead and tell us sure um so i’m a huge warrior all the time so i definitely didn’t wait till after graduation um probably like end of junior year senior year started freaking out a lot um end of junior year that’s that’s early that’s good i’m a warrior but to your benefit probably yeah yeah so what i did was just to start researching um clients are tractors that i wanted to work for and start making a list um of who i wanted to reach out to um actively trying to strengthen my portfolio although there’s really so much you can do as a senior in school because that’s definitely a process that keeps going um making sure i had a website when i graduated um yeah really just trying to be as prepared as i could and there’s only so much you can do i think to be prepared because it never starts immediately it’s like definitely a slow process one job after another one successful cold email after another so i would say there’s nothing wrong with like trying to see what there is to do as you’re planning to graduate because once you graduate it all goes so fast it does it does that’s um it’s i think it’s really great and it’s also really impressive that you were already thinking about your next steps i mean at some point in your junior year even which also tells me you had some sense of business by then i don’t think that’s everybody’s experience how about you guys what was where were you uh i mean even going back like i guess how early were you planning you know um i could i can go yeah i wanna hear about the ocad experience i think for me i was really debating whether to be a graphic designer actually for for quite a while i love drawing and i love illustration but i also really wanted to be part of this small team or the idea of being in a boutique design studio kind of appealed to me so i remember in my senior year i was sort of trying to have both ships going at the same time applying to jobs and that and then um but ended up one thing that really helped me was taking an informal mentorship from my friend pete ryan he’s an illustrator in toronto and um i think we can get into that a little more but i think mentorship was a pretty important um i guess cornerstone for me starting out to understand like the real nuts and bolts of getting my my career started and this is why you were still in school no this was um my first year out of school i was in his studio for maybe nine months okay wow yeah um and i think that experience was pretty formative because just being able to process how to make emails word them properly and the volume of promotional emails that any professional illustrator might be sending in a day and things like how to how to frame it in a way that’s personable and professional but you know making it tailored to that art director right and understanding um that not your your work won’t fit every publication like things like that so yeah i think it might have been maybe six to eight months before i even got my first you know job or even reply from an art director saying that they liked what they saw so yeah well so let me ask you the question was um you it sounds like you kind of you graduated and you rolled into a mentorship uh with pete um were you like so to kind of go back to the planning stage like you and you’re like to you you’re like all right this is what i’m gonna do this is what i’m planning to do this is my first strategic step after i graduate to bettering my like potentially setting myself up like i know that right like you you it wasn’t just like well i graduated now well i don’t know maybe i should talk to somebody right like you thought about this you gave it something i was a bit lost as i said i wasn’t sure if i wanted to be a designer or not and i moved back home to save money and all that and i was just thinking what can i do to to i guess motivate myself to figure out that answer and i think you know pete and i were talking before i graduated already just like you know discussing the nuts and bolts stuff and he just i guess we had that relationship prior and he offered that opportunity for me so um that kind of helped cement the decision if you will towards illustration right um that’s interesting i’m sorry i made you say it twice but about the struggling between like not just what you want to do but this idea of design or illustration or to take it in more of a macro it’s like what do i do with my illustration degree in some way now so dave i know you’ve ended up as both i do happen to inside a little like disclaimer like dave was my student so i know a bit more about what he was doing but you were working on design and illustration while you were in school were you thinking were you struggling with what do i like how does does your story reflect a bit of jeremy’s what were your thoughts well um the the design aspect of it kind of came from um i always wanted to be an illustrator i kind of i like the idea of graphic design just in that it uh had connections to illustration but illustration is definitely what i wanted to do there was really no doubt in any of that but um i started i don’t know just hearing from people who had graduated i think like at the end of junior year maybe the beginning of senior year just realizing that um nobody’s gonna wanna hire me for quite some time or if they do it’s not gonna be enough volume to sustain like bills and rent and all that kind of stuff and uh the reason i picked his eyes his uh its connection to illustration but it seems like people could graduate school and get design jobs that paid a living wage and i uh decided that if i want to i really wanted to move to new york right out of uh of school and i could not afford to do that doing freelance illustration um because nobody knew my stuff yet so i was trying to plan a way to kind of prop up my illustration career with a design job that is closely related to illustrations so to keep me like creatively sharp and a day job and then go home and work on illustration at night and kind of build that up slowly to have that be the career that i’m kind of coasting on yeah yeah so that’s really well thought out i mean and there’s no wrong or right way to do this i’m this is also like a huge disclaimer on that it’s like no if you feel lost again i feel like i’m talking to you guys when i’m trying to talk to the room right now if you feel lost if you have no freaking clue what you want to do or how should i manage this look it’s okay it’s okay you’re not expected you know it’s helpful to have a plan but it’s okay okay i just want to say that but going back to youtube especially christina and dave it sounds like you guys are really thinking ahead early were you do you feel like you were kind of self-initiating i mean it sounds like the way you describe it and relating to that myself you probably were but like was there something happening in school that you felt you were tapping into beyond what you’re learning in class or like you know like where’d you find the motivation to think ahead i guess is because i think that’s what people struggle with is like we get we focus on right now and it’s like let’s think longer term here um was it just panic was it like what was it you know like how did you start setting that like why even sit down and say oh i’m gonna start making a plan you know what i mean it was a panic for sure i am i think i had to teach tell me we had a very small uh portfolio class my senior year there’s about like uh maybe like 10 of us 10 14 of us and um nearly the end of the year this wasn’t the impetus of that but it was definitely like a factor that leads into that panic of him going like just to be real with you guys you’re about to graduate uh just like to say it like it is statistically one of your legs might make it as an illustrator just yeah which was like a hard truth that like i don’t know it could be discouraging it was super um motivating for me to be like oh i have to work really hard to make this work because it’s it’s hard it takes a lot of work and so that was a motivating factor of me if like if i don’t pay real close attention and work real hard this could slip away so when you were threatened with that i mean this i think is a classic thing and y’all let me tell me like how many of you have heard you know you’re in school and they’re like well five of you are going to make it yeah i’ve heard that a lot from my instructors as well yeah and uh i think not productive but please jeremy tell us go ahead i was saying like i i look back on that moment you know maybe six six months before graduating and we had the entire illustration program in one lecture hall and you know they were saying like each of your classes you know you can count on one hand like the those of you who will make it successfully and i knew at that moment that my work was not in the you know the the top tier like the professors clearly had sort of a fan favorites if you will and i definitely was not in that group so i i later on took that as fuel but i think in the moment that was quite discouraging knowing that i wasn’t gonna come out of school like a with a band you know so yeah so i guess i don’t know if that’s encouraging to anyone out there but it’s kind of like it’s not definitely not expected of of any of any of you and even myself to be that star student coming out of the gate right yeah i’m glad you said that i think that’s important for people to hear um actually jeremy let me just stick with you just i’m kind of glancing at the questions and this is just so relevant to literally what we’re talking about the moment um this question was for you about you know you said you went back home after graduating and she said the person asked if that was outside of new york which it was he was in uh canada in fact you so you weren’t even in new york no but the question kind of isn’t now i’m gonna kind of you know all of you is like you know i’ve been told it’s important to stay in new york for a career is that even true you know it’s very difficult and it’s expensive to stay here um essentially geography now i know we’re all i think we all live in brooklyn but you were allowed to say you don’t have to be here but like please christina maybe you could speak to like your thoughts on that as uh someone who’s been doing this so successfully probably without you know need for being in new york yourself i mean i feel like i had a bit of an advantage because i went to art school in new york so i already was here um but i definitely don’t think that it’s necessary to be here um i know plenty of illustrators who are successful who who even have to deal with time zones sometimes um but make it work um i do think that there definitely are a lot of advantages to being here and that’s why most of us are here um just being able to be in proximity to a lot of events to meet other people in the industry even if it isn’t for work opportunities just to be part of the community but on that point i would say even if you aren’t here that community exists online so like any way that you can make it um it’s possible you don’t have to be here yeah i think that’s like that i think it’s a good you make a great point and i think we probably all feel that way but the key word there community is like i think finding community is important so actually let me pivot into something and this is this is why this is so wonderful that’s just a conversation like there’s no script this is i’m not going to follow but like community and talking to people and that kind of leads into i think a question i hear a lot from people that are graduating or new to it or whatever is about oh well is everybody my competition or is everybody my community you know and so like i think people struggle with that like should i be like is it a competition or are we can we support each other and i think what you said is kind of uh helps address that does anybody want to give more thoughts on that that concept like you’re not really competing even though we’re yes we all want work but it’s not we don’t have to feel like we’re competing with each other i don’t really see it as competition because i mean we’re we’re in a profession that is so um centered around uh making things that speak from your heart that like even if two people kind of work similarly like you’re two different people creating something that means something to you so it always has kind of a separation to it it’s not like we’re two competing like car companies or something like our models like it’s you’re making something that comes from your soul and uh i mean if you’re not if you’re copying someone else’s style then you’re probably not going to get the work anyway because it really you could tell when something means something to somebody when it comes from them so i mean yeah i’m i’m also rambling because i haven’t talked to a person in a really long time no no you’re fine man you’re all good but am i making any sense does that make sense with anybody i i can jump off that what you’re saying david that really resonates with me because i think in the past even just in the past year or so i felt much more uh like loving respect towards as a community towards my fellow illustrators because it kind of coincided with me discovering what i wanted to say for my story and make it more personal to my work and then my work reflected that clarity of who i am as a person and i think when i was younger and earlier in my career it was i was still sort of imitating the people i admired so much and then i felt that kind of negative competitive feeling because i was still in a way imitating someone else but once i discovered and this takes time there’s really no shortcut to it but it’s like once i discovered that voice then that feeling went away a bit yeah wow that’s super cool sorry no no that’s really fascinating i think i would you know i think there’s a lot of things that get wrapped into that you know like there’s probably this imposter syndrome right this thing that creeps up on us it’s like why do i feel that if i’m not welcome is it because of the work i make i think these are all things that i’ve gone through i you jeremy’s talking about i’m sure you both have felt it and all of these people that are listening as well um which actually kind of leads us to an another a a good topic and that is portfolios okay you’re graduating you’re just starting out or you even if you’ve been in the business a long time you want to pivot maybe into a new market whatever but let’s talk about graduation your graduating portfolio versus the portfolio you have now which i know it’s been a number of years but even just like six months after you graduate you know just let’s just talk about the differences and how like what you’re doing in school is so much about you and your ideas and then this concept of when you get out in the world you want to be professional you’re letting in other people other people’s stories how did you feel your portfolio changed can you kind of put yourself in those that that are those shoes again can we can we address that let’s talk to the illustrator christina exclusive illustrator christine singleton i want everybody to talk at once is what i’m hoping for except because they’re all i know i would say that the main difference with my graduating portfolio is that i’ve gotten to a point where i really am able to enjoy the work that i make um and it wasn’t easy getting there i feel like the work coming out of school i was proud of it but it was also really forced because i was trying so hard to be someone i wasn’t sure of yet and since graduating and haven’t worked for a few years now um i feel like it’s really important to make work that you’re passionate about um and in that way your voice can come through um if you find yourself making work that you think is marketable whatever that might mean that would end up you know making you hate the work that you make and as a consequence of that hate the jobs that come in because that’s what you’re putting out there um so it’s definitely hard but finding the medium between work that you can enjoy the work that can be applied to the market as well is important and it’s definitely a process you don’t need to have that immediately when you graduate but it’s something to keep in mind yeah that’s uh i i’m so glad you described it in those terms because i think that’s so it’s it’s completely accurate this idea that um you know illustration is working with others i mean commercial illustration there’s no way around that so how do you find that balance of satisfying yourself but satisfying a client and um i’m glad you kept using it’s a process like you said it’s like you don’t have to have it right away do you do you recall i mean you talked about a bit about your struggle with or just like a learning curve with that um were there early jobs painful you know did you feel like you weren’t yourself you know or um and i think that yeah just trying to appeal to what seemed to be marketable at that time um but really wasn’t me um and something that is kind of related to that is just like making sure when you send sketches out to the client that you like all of them because more often than not they’ll choose the one that you don’t like and it just makes the process really painful um yeah yeah it’s true very true what about you two similar experience or feeling like i mean i know jeremy i feel like we had a conversation when i actually first met about you know is this is is what i’m doing even does it work for these markets is this do you even know what i think i remember you showing me something like do you even know what this means and i was like it doesn’t matter it’s amazing and it’ll work for you know i don’t really the the details are vague but talk us through that yeah i i remember having that beer with you john um i i think the the thing that i had going uh out of school like the portfolio it was just um i was i’ve always been a kind of a perfectionist and focusing way too much on details and i think it showed that my work was just overwrought and kind of heavy-handed and i also had this this um you know in my senior year the thesis professors were giving us the assignments based on editorial articles and really drilled in this notion that it had to have the metaphor and the tie-in to the writing right and so i mean in hindsight it was good as an exercise but i think it made my portfolio very detached from who i was as a person because it was just they were all mocked assignments right so i think my work was looking back it just felt heavy-handed um and and the detail stuff also got in the way just you couldn’t see the simple concept the nugget of the illustration yeah yeah doesn’t it feel like sometimes in the beginning we like try to do we we like overthink ourselves sometimes yeah what about oh sorry please christina go ahead all right it’s it’s just hard sometimes with illustration because we work in like visual metaphors and trying to communicate something very very quickly at a glance that you can over complicate things completely okay so so but i don’t i just try to like give space so i don’t interrupt anybody well so let me ask you that like this again for everybody continuing like on this is when you know you’re doing those early jobs there’s this like oh my gosh i just got hired versus oh my gosh i’m drawing like what am i making i don’t really like this it’s this process is totally not necessarily what i expected how do you push through that you know why why did you stick with it um i mean i the good thing about it uh about illustration in general too especially like editorial illustration is you can get a job and uh it not be going great and there’s always going to be another one right around the corner so and also um what i found is the hardest jobs um and sometimes the most painful jobs you learn the most from you learn your limitations about what you can do in a certain amount of time um once you graduate school you think yeah i’ll draw anything whoever will give me a job i’ll do it and then i ended up doing a bunch of illustrations for the uh church of jesus christ of latter-day saints magazine because i just wanted work i wanted to be an illustrator and then i started doing all of these very mormon-centric illustrations and i was like i think i want to be more specific about the art i wanted to not just get a paycheck yeah yeah so yeah i mean you you push through them because you like making art and you’re always excited about the next piece even if you’re excited about the next piece well you’re still currently doing this one um but you i mean those pieces that you have to push through i really think you pull a lot of lessons from and uh to not take that for granted to be like oh that sucked and you forget everything about it now like really try and pull the nugget out of why that was difficult uh yeah and then i think that’s a very i mean that’s an optimistic way of seeing things i think it naturally happens though it doesn’t it’s like not about being i’m a positive or negative about the work i’m making like you you i think we learn from everything we do sometimes you learn like well i’m never doing that again you know you can learn the negatives too um in this experience um yeah i just i find it fascinating like what keeps us in it you know um because it’s hard it’s very hard in the beginning especially and so i guess you know for me it was always just like well as long as i’m getting hired that’s fine because i cuz i don’t know i guess i always thought like something i guess i have to get better you know or maybe i’ll get better or whatever but it was always just like as long as i’m getting hired i’m on this track but i think it came from having you know goals like i knew what i wanted i feel like the three of you and jeremy you found it like had an idea of what you wanted and when you have that do you feel like it kept you guided you know um or maybe you had other outside influences keeping you on a straight on like a guided path towards your goal um what what goals specifically are you referring to well like okay i have this idea of what illustration is going to be and what my career is going to look like and it starts and it doesn’t look like that right away why do you stay you know what i mean like um yeah and you might be a good example because like you didn’t know you found it after the fact i worked three years at a corporate job that i ended up hating but that was my day job to keep the dream alive in the evenings you know um and then for a while i was burnt out of illustration too while i was at that job so i wasn’t really drawing for like maybe a year and a half um and i think what kept me going or at least what reawakened it was um like rediscovering at an event say icon or or um going to new york for a weekend and meeting up with people and realizing oh yes like i do love this it’s beautiful and it’s it’s so inspiring so like those those things sort of added up and slowly built the dream alive again but yeah it took a long time to like there were definitely moments where i just wasn’t even motivated to to keep going i guess yeah it’s really valuable to hear that jeremy because i think it’s a good example of like look everyone’s gonna have their own pace yeah you can still like there was still something in you that kept you like you didn’t totally walk away and um you know from where i stand i think you found a healthy success and your work you know it all it seems to be coalescing thank you yeah i mean the path was definitely not but i one thing i think was consistent and i can’t share is that i did always keep an eye on the evolving trends in illustration and just keeping up with people whether it be instagram or whatever just seeing what’s out there even if i personally wasn’t creating anything at that time or you know yeah um so just like sort of one more sort of educational question about your portfolios before we move on just other stuff and actually what kind of kind of control we’ve got a lot of questions that are coming in so we’ll get to or we’re going to eventually get to a point i’m just going to fire off questions but um nothing against the the mormon religion it was just those yeah no of course of course it was just magazine yeah no but it’s a good point is like just to highlight dave so he’s not feeling like he’s hanging out there on a branch and i know that we can all all four of us can relate to this you like again you have this idea like oh i wanna i wanna do a portrait for rolling stone magazine or i wanna do a book cover for harper collins or an ad campaign for nike and the first shot that comes is like motorbike weekly and you’re like you know what hell yeah okay never heard of it great or or draw 20 biblical figures or maybe that’s not much of your interest all right maybe i will the budget’s good you know it happened it’s okay it’s okay and honestly i think those jobs are important in the beginning to kind of just like get yourself moving it would be i think a terrible thing to get out of school and immediately get a rolling stone job because i feel like you would fumble it yeah that’s true we could have a whole podcast or whatever this is zoom meeting about first jobs exclusively and the crushing emotions and shitty art that comes out of that but i digress yeah anyway just one more question about portfolios because when i look at your portfolios what the thing about these and i wanted to make sure everyone really hears this is what i look at and see of these three successful people is consistency consistency in their portfolio and focus all right so i just wanted if that for you if that’s deliberate because you say you as a business decision if that’s natural if it’s a bit of both if it’s what because i think that’s what a lot of uh new people struggle with and i’m seeing questions about it where it’s like well i want to do a little bit of everything or i kind of want to be a part of it all or my portfolio like what do i include in my website all that kind of funnels into consistency or you know what what’s the thought process you know christina tell us um i think it’s a little bit of both um i think it’s important to have consistency in terms of style and i know that’s kind of a touchy word as a student um but i think that it’s important to have something where clients can look at your work and have some kind of idea of what they’re going to get out of hiring you but i do think that it’s good to have variety in your portfolio as well just to show how your voice can be applied to different topics um so a little bit of both yeah fair uh good balance of topical well i anyway before i summarize let’s hear from everybody else i’m just uh kind of booking this stuff dave tell me about yours because i know that especially now your website is like look i do these two things but i feel like it’s very clear and organized in a way that makes sense yeah and well i like if you asked if it was like intentional or or natural and i feel like it started out intentional and then like um i actually don’t see as much consistency in my work i i constantly look at it like every project i do i’m like this feels different and i i don’t know we actually had a conversation about it recently where you were like i don’t know every time i see something you’ve done even if it’s design or illustration i could tell it’s you and yeah which was surprisingly because i didn’t think so i feel like everything i do i’m kind of just like stumbling through it and then it’s done and i’m like oh look what this looks like um so i guess it’s natural but i um i’m realizing that what connects it is what interests me about the drawings is that the um the detail and the minutia of it like i like to have like a solid like structure of like what’s the idea that i’m trying to get across but like the part of the art that interests me is doing all of that crazy minutiae detail so i guess just me finding enjoyment in making it is connecting all of them so maybe yeah the enjoyment of the process is what makes them all look similar yeah i i i had to go on my website again to look at my work in hindsight because i do think part of it is like consistency only happens when you look back i don’t know like i i do have a few ideas of like this the swirling line work and the textural stuff that i that i know i really enjoy drawing but um i guess i guess it’s it’s what i ended up doodling in my free time that i ended up taking into my client work is a big thing for me as well and and for me the lines that i draw are a reflection of you know some of the feelings i have so that ended up because i feel like i have changed my style style quote-unquote um throughout the years but that motif has stayed the same yeah yeah yeah and i you two are actually both of you dave and jeremy are a great example and actually i i don’t mean to generalize but i think christina and i kind of fall into a category you look at our two bodies of work and it’s like i make the stuff this um there’s pretty like the same way there’s variation but it’s like that’s a that’s what i do christina same thing variation always getting like better and better but it’s like always like i know what she does it’s amazing and i know what i’m gonna get and i’m very happy with that you two it’s like i look at that work and i say i know it’s theirs but there’s a bit more play and i don’t know if maybe there’s a bit of your designer-ness coming into that or not or what but it happens i think the consistency in craft over substance is a big thing as well which i think is what christina was kind of pointing out you could draw whatever you want if the craft is there it’s still your work um yeah you can ask how would you define the difference between that the consistency of crap versus substance how would i define that yeah sorry to throw it back at you but no no it’s fine i just want to make sure i heard that yeah yeah i would define that as like i mean i’m basically i’m trying to avoid using that style word um it’s like you know if if i’m executing my work in a similar manner if it’s it’s all drawn in the same it all exists in the same world like if you picture your like if you’re drawing people in your art and you picture them existing in a universe of their own does the way you draw the person in piece one fit in the same universe as the person you drew in piece 20 and if so and all the objects or settings or whatever it is in that piece builds the universe and that in piece one fits in the same universe as piece 20. to me that’s consistency in your craft um from there like look i don’t care if you’re painting with watercolor you paint it with gouache whatever if the underlying core of it is all there it probably won’t matter you know um but again you know that’s just my opinion um i had an art director tell me once and uh luckily it was one that i worked in the same office with um but i was just doing an illustration for him and uh i was showing him something and he said uh i don’t know i don’t i don’t think he should render it like this rend it render it like this and it was like an old poster style or something else and i was like that’s not really how i work and he goes well no i want you to do this though and he’s like your your style isn’t how you draw it’s the ideas you have you had this idea i’m telling you how to draw it but this is your idea that’s what makes it yours and i don’t know how i feel about necessarily but it was helpful at the moment and i kind of i kind of took that to heart of just like my ideas are what make me me not how i make it oh that’s interesting that’s interesting i don’t know i’m not sure if they agree with that yeah i was gonna say i don’t know if i agree what’s funny is what’s funny is uh i took that like to heart at the time and i don’t think i’ve ever repeated it until just now and as i’m saying i’m like i don’t know if i agree with this but i but i live it though because i make stuff that i made a piece last week out of pastel and i don’t ever work in pastel but like just kind of it was all about the idea and the idea was very me all right um no no it’s fascinating input um all right let’s pivot though to marketing because i want to keep us on a timeline here a bit so marketing so now you’ve got your portfolio now you’re graduating now you’re like all right how am i going to get this to people how am i going to sell myself i think when it comes to that what we can all think of is insecurities because we’re talking about talking to strangers right um do you feel like it was just your personality to be able to put yourself out there and send your work to strangers did it did you have to overcome that fear um you know let’s start there the feeling because i think as people are dealing with these emotions getting over those hurdles anyone can chime in okay um i think for me it definitely was a matter of faking it till you make it um one of the benefits of being able to like for example cold email and art director is that you don’t have to be there in person so um it’s just a matter of writing out an email and sharing your work um and i think that once you get over the initial hurdle of sending out you know your first promotional email the worst thing that can happen is you get a no or no answer and then you just keep going because the only way that you can build a career is just to keep moving forward a great one i’ve heard this tip from you jb because i think in your podcast you said once that if an art director as long as the author hasn’t said please stop emailing me that’s true and i think that’s exactly what christina was just saying is like just keep moving forward you know if you can’t until someone says leave me alone just don’t but again that’s the hard part i think people like feel oh am i am i even good enough to be descending this um you know it takes courage i think but jeremy actually i wanted to ask you specifically because i know for a fact you did a lot of outreach and i know it took some time like you were talking earlier about then going to work with pete but i mean you emailed me i know you had another i don’t know if it was an internship or whatever with some other illustrators in new york but basically i felt like you did a lot of outreach on your own self-initiated can you you know why how did you find yourself doing that what you know you said screw it i’m going to jump off the cliff let’s go or like what um i think that’s one benefit of having that corporate job was that it taught me how to be more um courageous i guess in asking for a coffee or asking for beer with somebody and just getting some feedback because and working through a bit of that insecurity because i definitely had that a lot uh in the beginning um but i think for me i knew that building those inroads and reaching out would be very important to you know becoming successful because otherwise i’d just be in a vacuum by myself right and i think i’d rather get that honest feedback sooner than later right and so just to point out and i think this is an important um note to highlight you reached out to people because you sought advice you weren’t i mean this is not necessarily marketing but in a similar vein like you weren’t like hey you can help me help me get work help me hire like hire like uh you were just like hey can i get your advice hey can i ask you some questions i think that’s really genuine and it’s not like it was a strategy maybe maybe it was but i mean it is a bit but it’s also like about being community and friendly to each other um but that’s a scary thing so it’s it’s like you just kind of have to go for it right yeah yeah it’s a good it’s a good point to make uh to clarify yeah i never thought of it as like oh i’m going to try and get something out of it out of this i mean i will in in retrospect but it’s like i try to treat it as an open-ended conversation right and out of respect for that other person yeah right you know speaking of being nice christina i want to ask you specifically because uh about freelance marketing um you’re a very nice person i can tell that i’ve met you a few times and i immediately thought you were just so lovely but specific to marketing in some ways uh when you post about your work online you’re very friendly to about the people you work for you tag them you say this is thank you those art director but it doesn’t fit you know it it you don’t have to do that so can you why why are you why do you do that i know it’s just your personality so you don’t have to be like but you know there’s something to that like can you can you just kind of talk people through like why that’s important i guess yeah um a couple of reasons so i mean first of all it is a collaboration um sometimes the art director has more input than others sometimes it’s completely my idea but at the same time like they hired me for their job so if it weren’t for them that job wouldn’t have happened um so it’s definitely to show appreciation but also i remember as a student one of the ways that i was able to kind of coach clients was because a lot of illustrators give credit to who they’re working for and to be able to find you know our director’s names or publications from that was really useful for me so kind of giving back a little bit in that way as well so let’s like let’s give that a pause you can it’s a great strategy it’s okay to go and say oh wow this person posted about this art director i’m gonna go write that art director’s name down and if i feel like it would work for me i’m gonna send them some material as well there’s nothing wrong with that that’s part of it too well it’s so lovely to hear you say you know so why not kind of take and catch and release a bit as well on your own end which is you know again about not being competition but community i think is the thing so let me ask you this dave i know you get uh real nervous about around people um no i’m just kidding no but here’s a great question um actually our esteemed president asked and i’m just gonna throw it in now instead of later is look you guys are all comfortable at least on here you’re outgoing do you feel like you have to be outgoing to be able to succeed you know does it have to be about this like socializing and mingling and chatting um because i know how many of students and how many people do you know we’re all very introverted how can you make that a success as well or maybe reassure people maybe the art directors could talk about that i mean um i at the very beginning of like getting out of school or even in school and like going to events and stuff i was very uh sweaty and very nervous to like talk to because when you’re in school you see illustrations from the the greats and stuff and then they’re just like standing there with their name tag and you’re all freaked out you want to talk to them um and uh but there’s kind of like no way around that you’re gonna be like that for a little bit and just know that like you will eventually feel a little more comfortable and i’ve made some really good friends within the illustration community at those events hiding in the corner away from the professionals with all the other students and then you make friends with all those people and then you all kind of rise up and become professionals and it’s kind of like an ever-changing wave of people in the community so you will make friends in this community and you never know who those people are going to be but um yeah i mean when if you’re at a an event and you feel shy and self-conscious and you talk to the other people who are feeling that way then great then those are your people so yeah that that’s that’s so great i remember when um when i was experiencing that early on as well my my mentor um shout out to matt curtis courteous excuse me missing updates name that courteous if he’s on here i have no idea but maybe some of the students but he said to me he and his wife gina always said just go to the event and have fun like just go have fun go there go be there because you want to be there or i guess in this case if you want to if you want to work with somebody just email them if you don’t feel like you want to work with them you don’t have to reach out um but go and have fun if you meet somebody great if you don’t that’s okay you still just went and had fun and you almost it’s like taking pressure off yourself i think right release the pressure of this performance um and i think maybe it makes it a bit easier for those folks who uh you know aren’t feeling like the need to be chatty i will say this though just to address directly you don’t have to you don’t have to go to the society of illustrators to to have a career you don’t have to go and party with other people to have a career yes it will offer you opportunities in ways that you can’t quantify and you may not be able to quantify for years but you don’t have to it just doesn’t you just don’t i mean raise your hand i mean okay dave and jeremy art directors when’s the last time you phone called somebody to hire them never never you email me we can all hide behind email it’s fine you know it’s okay i think right honestly my phone rings in my office or i can say that i don’t have an office um but when my phone rings at my desk i get scared i’m like who’s calling me why so so early um i mean at any point really but er like again early on i’m just gonna quit saying that um you know promotion strategy let’s promotion okay um maybe at a time when you had less money just of a but less of a budget to be able to spend on marketing materials um maybe you were balancing time with a second job or a corporate job with jeremy you’re talking about or mentoring or whatever it is um how often were you promoting yourself what kind of promotion were you dealing with when you had to be creative about a budget um any specific strategy tips you can offer on that even now if that relates i thought of putting stickers on city bikes because they go everywhere no i don’t know and i thought about i thought about wheat pasting posters up in front on like construction sites that were near the clients i wanted to work for in hopes that they would walk past i guess i guess i didn’t say that when i started i was doing postcards um double-sided and my name on both sides email um and then i was sending it out and then waiting a week or two and then following up with an email after that um and i may have gotten maybe less than 10 replies maybe even but not even that so um now it’s all email um i do occasionally if i make something special like a zine then i’ll send it out to or yeah or a small print i’ll send it out to art directors that i really admire but those would be like less than 30 or 25 people so um yeah does that answer the question i think that that’s yeah yeah totally honestly art director getting stuff like a zine is super exciting in your inbox we get postcards all the time if it’s ever something different i get real excited about it there you go so you can also i can also add too like at putting my art director hat for a second like i i do appreciate when when students or or recent grads you know address me personally and maybe name something specific that they liked or someone else that i hired just to know that they were actually trying to you know pay attention to what i was doing previously so that that helps a lot in putting putting that seat in my head to consider that person yeah that’s really valuable information guys that i mean you’re hearing it right from the people that we want to work for so um thanks for sharing that honestly uh christina you’re the illustrator here um i mean we are but you know when you’re do you when you promote do you are you i’m generalizing but are you sending a thousand emails are you sending 100 emails you know what i mean um in one sitting um anywhere between 5 and 20 depending on how desperate i am um yeah i think emails are my main source of promotion um early on i was like jeremy as well i would send out postcards um but for me just the cost of printing and the fact that you know work tends to change pretty quickly like um work from a few months ago might not work or look like the work that i have now and that just ends up being a lot of dead stock postcards not going anywhere so email is free as long as you have internet connection so um i rely on that i also think social media is huge um even if it’s just putting your work out there you never know who’s looking who’s following you um but also for example on twitter there are like hashtag events where um people can find your work through specific days where um hashtags are um being promoted like for example visible woman or portfolio day i’ve gotten jobs just by doing that um and like being part of the community on social media um again just that online community i was talking about um being part of the conversation like you never know who’s looking at it um even just passive promotion um making more work means that your work and your name get out there and sometimes job come in jobs come in just based on your reputation maybe your peers have recommended you or a client that you’ve already worked with recommended you to someone else um so i feel like it’s important to do like a little of everything really a little bit of everything when it comes to the marketing side and promoting yourself yeah i’m glad you said that i i fully agree that’s my my approach as well and whatever i’ve always um i mean none of these ideas are uh unique to me but what i’ve been taught and what i teach now is this idea of you’re trying to be top of mind to somebody like if you’re you can’t be everywhere but if you put your work out in all these places you know as much as best you can you’re kind of just there you know you can be direct about your an email or a postcard or a nice mailer but then you’re just there and then if you’re there you’re on top of their the ideas you’re on top of mine like oh i need that uh like uh i forget how you described your work uh but a description like christina’s artwork that’s that christina i have to hire her why wouldn’t i that’s that’s the person because you’re just on top of their mind because you’re kind of everywhere so i think that’s important for people to hear another point you made there and you know it’s kind of really couples with jeremy the way you described like look if someone makes the email personal on some level to you you’re gonna either just not only appreciate it but maybe take notice christina and all of you whoever whatever but so what you’re saying like it’s not about hitting everybody it’s about knowing who you’re attract or you’re marketing to you’re targeting feeling like you know that your work might would work well for them if the case or if the opportunity arose and being more specific about it as opposed to just let me just throw this at the wall and hope something sticks and who cares i don’t care right or no yeah it actually kind of is like weird when you get an email from somebody and they’re like i want to work with you on a book cover and like their work is nothing like anything i would hire and you’re like wait you’re clearly just scatter shouting your emails like when they’re more targeted it really me is meaningful i don’t know if i stepped on christina’s toes there sorry no it seems okay yeah i know i i think that’s a really i just really want to make sure that’s highlighted that like it’s okay to know the people you’re trying to work for it’s part of the job i think and i think it goes a long way um i think our anxieties when we graduate are well if i just try everything like i’ll i you know i’ll get money from somewhere but it’s like i think longer term bigger picture thinking is to be specific and that probably leads into more rewarding work ultimately um as well yeah and if you sign up relationships yeah if you say like hey i’d like to work with you i saw this thing that you posted on instagram or whatever you worked on this thing and they’re like i i like your work i’d like to work with you i mean art directors were we’re people we’re artists just like you and we need validation that’s why we’re in art so when you do that it feels good and now we’re like oh that’s cool what does our artwork look like and you just make kind of like an immediate email human connection yeah yeah no yeah that’s that’s it sounds exactly like what people need to hear um well actually let’s talk about you guys and i mean all of us but like working in house so um christine a question did you have any day job at all before you got started in as a full-time freelancer what was i don’t know that story if you yeah um i had a part-time um design job as an assistant in a small graphic design company um and i was a barista status at a certain point too and yeah yeah i was gonna say there’s no shame in taking a day job a part-time job a job that isn’t at all related to illustration just to get by um because the reality is that it takes a while to get the ball rolling and if it is really what you want to do you you have to do whatever it takes to keep it going it’s totally true and here’s the thing it’s another thing i just want to plug this like bit of emotional advice uh i can’t turn off the teacher in me is if anybody tells you and i i would like to think that all of us would agree with this if anybody tells you that having a secondary job or working at freaking petsmart or being a barista while you’re trying to get your career going is like wrong or uncool or any of that they’re wrong and they’re lying to you and they’re giving you bad advice it is okay everybody on here had day jobs everybody worked part-time or full-time and some found a love for staying in that situation it’s okay okay all right so off my high horse back down to earth about being in-house designers and versus freelancing balancing it you have both careers you guys um first of all this is a and this kind of hits on some questions we’re getting so i’m hoping that i’m addressing some of them y’all uh out there in the the participant world what did you do to get that what did you need to secure an in-house job a design in-house job because a lot of people are going through illustration departments no one’s like i mean at least the students i speak to they’re like indesign so was it self-taught did you you knew you just planned what did you need to do with a you know you know like all that all that talk about it um i mean uh internship like i really like the the out of school i started like applying to stuff and it was like real quick turnaround emails like why would i hire you as a designer you’re an illustrator and i was like good points because i was trying to make my work while in school and um i mean it just it was the best i could do at that time which wasn’t very good but i um really wanted to learn design um and i was teaching myself as best as possible but i uh applied for an internship with uh rich tubes at this the time was at like a broadway broadway poster kind of company and uh they paid me very little but it was that kind of thing of the trade-off of listen i’ll do all this work for for very little money if you teach me the things i need to know so it was that trade-off of um yeah it was like six months taking a two-hour train in and a two-hour train out from jersey into new york and putting in those hours and just creating as much work for them as possible but then it slowly started to fill up my portfolio with more and more professional looking stuff so that when that internship ended i had this batch of work that i didn’t have before and uh i could start interviewing at places and and they would take me seriously because i had some professional work they didn’t know how little i was paid for it and i wouldn’t tell them but yeah but it’s definitely that’s uh insightful i like that’s a great story to hear because i think that you know the education again you had to kind of educate yourself with this idea of an illustration portfolio versus a design portfolio uh jeremy you know what was your experience actually i remember i don’t know what you’re doing before but i remember you being even saying like hey you you retweeted the that the institute if i can blow up your spot institutional investor is looking for a designer i’m going to apply to that so like what did you have a design portfolio versus an illustration portfolio what how did what was your approach to find that yes i do work at institutional investor.com and yeah i’m the staff illustrator there i make work i make art for the site every day and i think the one thing that helped me it did connect in my past corporate job where i had a bit of portfolio work around um typography and layout and i even did a bit of app design so i think it helped the in-house folks at ii to know that i could i guess operate in a corporate environment and and you know know how to to not just draw but also communicate well my ideas to the editors and and the team at large right because it’s not just the work that we’re making it’s how we speak about it and everything so yeah yeah i’m so glad you said that you’re you’re taking me right you’re just you’re just leading us right into the next conversation but well let’s go there let’s go there and then i’ll circle back to that one more uh i think it’s important to hear uh another tip from dave but talking about your work what you just said you had experience in the corporate world and so they felt comfortable with you because you could speak their language yeah okay something i notice about y’all all of you i’m gonna go back to it and i’m gonna call out christina here in her her bio so just for everybody listening they all submitted a bio to me i did not make that up so christina sent me this bio and her she described her work in one sentence and it said her work well she said it focuses on intricacies color and symbolism and draws inspiration from the natural world and powerful storytelling in one sentence almost like six words six key words i can i have an idea of what i would get from her i have i have a visual in my mind that is effective use of language so you’re clearly really good all of you about describing your work with language not just pictures can you talk about the importance of that to your success as a career to being able to navigate clients why language and talking about your art is almost as important as making it visually well because we’re reading articles before we make sketches right and we have to be able to distill all of that two thousand three thousand words into a few sentences and sometimes the art director does that for us which is great but um at least for me like i have to take those words and put it in a google doc and then highlight the blurbs that stand out to me and then and then distill that article down into that one sentence right so i figured that sort of translates to how i also talk about myself yeah i hope that that makes sense totally do you think that um being able to i don’t know summarize your art effectively helps you attract more work or helps you uh get more jobs because you’re competent on both sides anyone um well it it certainly helps me contextualize my work when i talk to myself about it i’m like oh this is this is how i feel about my work right now or this is what i like and it my next personal piece will draw on that idea right based on what i just wrote about myself yeah right i guess um pitch illustrators to people also when uh when illustrator is turning let me stop let me stop you let me make sure everybody hears that say that again about what you have to do at your job like you’re the art director we want to work for you what do you have to do you have to do what you have to pitch i have to pitch illustrators to um to non-creatives i have to say like this is this person um this is the kind of work they do and here are like the highlights of say the story is very emotional be like this it’s very powerful lighting um it’s a great sense of atmosphere stuff like this and a lot of the times um when artists turn in sketches they’ll write in a little description and sometimes it’s just like man standing in middle of street with sun overhead but like sometimes i get into the language of it and it’s super helpful to me because i don’t have to improv while i’m pitching illustrators or pitching certain sketches but it’s basically um taking the visual side of it that they’re not used to and turning it into the words side of it that they are used to and trying to kind of almost translate it into a language they understand so would you say you an illustrator who can speak clearly and without rambling about the work they’re doing for you makes your job easier oh absolutely do you like it when in illustrator makes your job easier yeah yeah yeah of course absolutely if an illustrator is is eloquent about their work and then turns in good turns to good work it makes me look good because i’m the one who picked you i said look how cool this art is they’d be great and then if they turn in great art on time and they’re eloquent about it and be like see wasn’t that right like and you would you would probably want to hire them again absolutely so it’s good business to be able to speak about your work absolutely this is what you guys all do which is why you’re all successful you just turned in bios for this this thing and look at you i was like dang okay like eloquent lines and it’s it’s i think it’s a common thread we have to be able to talk about our art which again something that as students we tend to bury burrow our heads in the sand and just make the art and it’s like well tell me about it and it’s important just practice it practice talking about it summarize keywords whatever it is i think it goes a long way to you i mean clearly to the success of the the people or the folks we have right here right now um okay well here’s a question for you and then we’re gonna move to i’ll try to start going through random the questions we have that some of them are written out long but let me just ask you one more thing because i think this is another that will happen how are you the career is not this it’s a mountain right it’s ah you know it’s like so when it’s when it’s hard when it’s slow in the beginning when no one responds to your emails when you feel like your work isn’t good enough but you’re still making it how are you staying motivated how are you keeping yourself focused when it’s tough or maybe you don’t okay no no no just kidding um i’ll go um when it’s tough um i like to talk kind of talk it through i mean when you kind of work in this field you kind of develop develop friendships with people who have similar type jobs or even if they don’t have jobs like like ours you you i like to talk it through with people and just talk about art and uh also every once in a while if i’m um feeling some kind of creative slump um i go to like a museum or something like that just like just fill my brain with creative input whether it’s like a design museum or like an architectural museum just like go go absorb stuff and that always helps me and get out of my comfort zone if i’m sitting at my desk for days on end and nothing’s happening get out of your desk go somewhere new go do something go to a restaurant you’ve never been to go for a walk stuff like that i don’t know if that’s technically the answer you’re looking for i have no there’s no i’m not looking for anything i want what you do i think it’s good though because like you know you can’t you stare at a blank page you’re not going to be creative you got to experience the world it’ll probably jog yourself a bit i mean um yeah how about y’all too anybody wanna if you don’t if you’re not you know you want to chime in but anybody have anything to contribute to that yeah um i think it’s important to just know that rejection doesn’t mean that if you’re a failure and once you are a working illustrator just because you have a lull in work that doesn’t mean you’re a failure either um it’s just kind of the nature of the business and i feel like it’s to your benefit to take that time if you have some time off um to continue to push further um and that can be like if you’re feeling burnt out take some time to work on a personal project something that you know you can actually be passionate about um and just making work on the side instead of like stagnating and waiting at your inbox for someone to contact you like that keeps your mind fresh um can refresh your portfolio take you somewhere farther um and again like yeah sometimes continuing to work really isn’t the right solution yeah taking a break going to a museum um finding inspiration elsewhere it’s just the reality of it is it’s not easy um so you have to find a way to keep yourself motivated um and stay passionate about it because that’s i mean that’s why i’m doing it because i love it’s not because it’s an easy job you know i think that’s really important what you highlighted there personal work and then but why so i think it’s important that we you know i’ve always i always ask people i know it’s like why do you do it why do you want to be an illustrator why why why and then actually i was i was recently sleep training my nine-month-old baby and the the advice we were getting from this sleep training person was have your why statement when your kid is crying at night screaming bloody murder and you’re trying to let them cry it out to learn how to sleep you have to know why you’re doing this in order to be able to get through the hard times why am i letting my kid cry because it’s better for them blah blah blah whatever same and i was like wow that’s just like illustration like why am i an illustrator and if you can answer that why do i want to do this because i love it christina said because i would do it anyway or whatever that’s what will keep you support you i think through those hard times if you’re not sure why you’re gonna there’s a greater chance of wavering um so i’m glad you kind of highlighted that point all of it was great advice though getting away from it too is really helpful you don’t have to be inundated that you’re not going to be a failure if you step away for and take you know what take a day off like who cares you know it’s okay uh i guess yeah my advice was if you’re having a tough time just go don’t do illustration go somewhere else but i know i i it’s so funny though because it’s literally opposite advice but it both it’s like both of them are so important you just have to know when the right which one works for sure and the the doing personal work absolutely i agree with that like especially if you’re in a lull it’s it’s usually because you were really busy just before that that you recognize the role so this is an opportunity to make some stuff that people aren’t going to hire you to make maybe it’s you’re trying to deal with some personal feelings and and your why is i want to communicate what this feeling is right now no one’s going to hire you to make an illustration about how you feel so use that time to do it now and maybe that is you’ll pull some gold out of that that will then lead to more interesting client work wow that yeah there’s a lot of like really nice advice all wrapped in there um appreciate you guys being open about you know you know we all go through it and so it’s a matter of how you manage it and there’s no right way but there’s definitely helpful ways um okay so i’ll tell you what let’s just jump i’m just gonna start firing off some questions um i’m gonna read these so i’m gonna do my best all right so actually so here’s the first one um how many of you actually felt well prepared and qualified when you first entered the illustration field not at all no you’re not going to probably let’s talk about how we all were like god damn i i was not good no uh no i don’t think you will and it’s okay i think the point i think what we’re looking for here is okay but you still did it and so why and not why blow out your why statement but like you pro just put yourself out there anyway you’ll get better right you guys all got better i mean my goodness if you look at the early work that i did versus the work i didn’t do now my goodness i think we could all relate to that right yeah yeah yeah and part of uh becoming prepared is um is doing it like the that whole like learn by doing thing i mean if you’re gonna wait to be ready to be an illustrator to start you’re never gonna start you become an illustrator like while you’re doing it and you become you become prepared i don’t know two three years into doing it like you’re not going to be prepared but it’s totally fine and also knowing that nobody is is is helpful right you start realizing you’re not the imposter we’re all imposters yeah and also that imposter syndrome doesn’t go away after you learn all the stuff you’re supposed to know yeah there you go so um christina said she at one point was a barista she worked a part-time design job jeremy was corporate dave did internships before getting his design career going this question is what are good nine-to-five jobs for illustrators who don’t want to freelance full-time i think the answer really is anything that makes you happy i mean right i would say maybe to start um and i heard this from uh andy j pizza he’s another great podcast illustrator host anyway he said do something that makes satisfies a different part of who you are that’s not art related and that might actually bring the feel into when you do draw in the evenings yeah that’s really that’s solid advice trying to always still even if it’s something that’s not art related try to do something in something in a field or in a in a realm that you at least enjoy or it feels like part of you so you’re not like defeated completely by that child just like i don’t even want to do anything else yeah no hey it’s true you don’t because you can get burnt you know these jobs look it’s hard to work two jobs having a freelance career and a part-time job a day job whatever it’s it’s two you’re you’re two jobs it’s hard so hopefully it’s you know you have to manage the mental drain that comes from that and um finding that that employment that satisfies that look if you enjoy serving drinks go be a bartender that’s fine you know honestly one of my favorite jobs that i was doing while illustrate i was still in school but i was trying to pick stuff up was uh i made crepes at a restaurant that was that was super fun and very similar culinary-wise there you go crepe maker um how often do we’re going to mark uh promotional marketing how often are you sending out your promo emails uh i mean anybody i know you guys all do freelance work but so let me throw a number out there how often maybe early on when you’re getting the career going especially i know it can get harder as you go on but how often how often are you promoting every couple months yeah if it’s yeah i would say you know i it would be um maybe a bit too much to receive the same email from the illustrator twice in a month so let me face it out like every couple months yeah so i gotta oh sorry go ahead i was just gonna say um it really depends though it could possibly be even more often than that um but the important part is like do you have new work to show like is there a reason why is there a reason why you’re you’re promoting this right now that’s a really that’s a good like barometer i guess to work off of um i’m not finding it in here but i remember somebody oh here we go so like and maybe the art director i mean anybody can answer this but just what are some of the like maybe he says what are some marketing no-nos um it could be just like maybe what not to say in an email or whatever i would just throw a no-no out there is don’t direct message um a potential art director on social media without being told to do so i think that will get you with a uh disdained response quickly it feels like it feels a bit invasive but uh i digress to the art directors all right i pushed that to the art directors um the same promotional email multiple times in a row i understand you may be having problems with ever whatever program you’re using but getting the same email multiple times in a row is uh is frustrating just inbox blowing up try to send you know small jpegs of your work um try not to send like huge files um i do think one thing that i will say is that adding jpegs is nice instead of only the website link just so that it’s easier to take a quick line set in my inbox oh i have one um your website should be your website shouldn’t be about look how cool my website is it should be look at all of my work um because if it’s hard to navigate your website and i’m trying to drag stuff over and it doesn’t like i don’t can’t drag into a folder to make a pitch board or i can’t find things or it’s hard to navigate i will give up because i have to work very fast art directors have to work very fast to get stuff going and your website should be showing your work in a very clean simple way um if it’s harder to navigate or the button keeps moving it gets very there frustrating go make it easier for art make it make the art director’s job easy um let’s see how about um all right how about i’m gonna make someone’s helmet christina tell me about the worst experience you’ve had working on a job that you’re comfortable sharing um i luckily haven’t had a lot um but one that sticks out was when an art director came to me without me having promoted to them before um and attached another illustrator’s art and asked if i could do like make work that looks like that and it’s just like if you wanted that why don’t you hire them yeah yeah that would that’s that’s uncomfortable yeah yeah and so i guess let’s just highlight that you don’t if you get that i’m not talking to christine i know i’m sure she i know she handled herself but like you don’t have to do that like you if you’re new if they’re like you just started you’re throwing your promo out there and they say great but you know what can you just make this thing that’s not a good opportunity you don’t have to do that um i think it’s important to hear that and it happens to everybody even christina who has like a best portfolio why wouldn’t you just wonder what she does oh gosh okay um oh do you think we all got illustration degrees jeremy right you had it you were in okay yeah okay but do you think you have to have an illustration agree to be in like to do this no no not at all i don’t think you even need to go to art school necessarily to do this i mean it can make things easier um for me going to art school and studying illustration definitely expedited that process of becoming an illustrator and just being able to be around professors who were working professionals and classmates who had similar dreams that helped a lot but it’s definitely not necessary if you want it bad enough you can do it i guess for me it’s um you have to know the rules before you break them so that’s why school was important for me because i found that years out i was finding myself unlearning some some things that i had ingrained in me in school so yeah yeah i found my community or started to build my community of like of illustrators in school but you don’t necessarily need to find them there i i found it very helpful to go to school because of the people i met but uh especially in a career like illustration where it could be so solitary and um seem so difficult to do when you’re trying to do it by yourself uh it’s really hard but when you’re surrounded by people who are trying to do the same goal have the same kind of lofty i want to make art from myself for a career it’s really helpful to have people around you who are a support system and that can be school but that can you can get that in a lot of different places nowadays yeah i agree completely with all that it’s funny i uh not to make too many stories about the fact that i have a child now but i keep saying like to my wife like if he shows signs or like 14 12 13 whatever that he’s like decent at this art thing i’m just going to teach him how to make a website we’re going to send out some promo emails and forget all that art school we’re gonna make an illustrator out of them who needs all that uh you just need the advice you know no one cares about your degree and no one has once asked me to see my degrees you know what i mean um we’re for illustration work and that is but positive and negatives finding community not finding community being exposed to other like-minded people versus not but you can find those in other places i think it’s you guys hit on a lot of that or all those things that are really important um oh oh gosh it’s so hard to choose questions um okay everyone likes to ask about agents having an agent um good bad early seek them out let them seek you uh i don’t know christina do you have an agent yeah i do you do and dave i know you do uh did what was your experience with that did that yeah did they come to you did you see them what um i seeked them out um and i’ve been with them for just over a year now um it’s been really good but i would say especially if most of our audience is students or young illustrators that i personally feel that it’s important to get some experience on your own just so you know like how the business of illustration is done um you know stuff like invoicing contracts doing your taxes um i feel like it’s really good to know how to do that yourself and then if you can get an agent build upon that for me because i already knew how to do that and had been working for several years getting an agent for me was about getting bigger jobs and accessing clients that i couldn’t on my own dave what about you you didn’t get one until a number of years into your career was it a strategic like the way christina described or what was your um yeah it was a little bit of that i um i was doing uh promos and i was sending them out um at like a regular interval and then um i think i had a couple of jobs that were um difficult it was difficult for me to deal with the client they were they were um i don’t know they’re uh i i was a young illustrator so i think they could feel like they could push me around a little bit so i thought it was a little bit of like i need some backup um so that was a little bit of what i wanted to do um not that that’s a regular thing but uh i was sending out promo emails and i thought like okay this could be uh add like to your team almost have somebody help me out with that side i could create my art and have them focus on that part because i didn’t feel like i was um necessarily good at all the paperwork side of it very okay but it was definitely important to get to know all of that so but you you and what you’re both saying is like you made that choice because you had the experience to know why you wanted it and why you need it or what you could use them for to your advantage not just like because you know i think people wonder if it wonder i want to highlight that not expect but wonder if it’s like uh i’m having a hard time getting work if i have an agent like they’ll just give me work right i don’t think it it’s not like that i mean yes that’s what their job is but that’s not it’s it’s just not like that i think it’s a work for work i mean that was my experience i have an agent as well i didn’t have one for the first nine years of my career and it was a very specific like i want to do stuff in these other markets they can help me let’s have this agreement let’s do this you know whatever it was a strategic choice um yeah yeah i knew my strengths and i knew my weaknesses were an agent’s strengths yes there you go um jeremy we have a question for you you are this person completely identifies with what you said about feeling that you were not in the group of people in class you could tell you know that was going to make it right away um and i feel like you kind of touched on this but maybe you could just you know highlight but like you know how did you kind of change your that like how did you overcome that um it seems like it was really you when you were done you figured it all out you re you reached out to people but could you just you know kind of maybe touch on that one more time um i guess i really owe it to my family and my friends supporting me emotionally um i think just instilling that confidence and you know in it for everyone else it may be you know a chosen family and just friends that they make and that’s why the community aspect is so important in seeing other illustrators as that and not as competitors yeah great um we haven’t really talked about money which is like can be its own complete thing which so maybe this is a bit hard because it’s so vague but like you know there are a few questions about how much can i expect to earn and whatnot but like i think i’m just going to pull this one piece out and as you can see they they ask like how can i know what to charge as freelance um somebody want to talk about that real briefly or not briefly but like kind of touch on that for me i i’m not sure how i would have gotten an idea of that um had i not taken a business class in school specifically for freelancing um so that definitely gave me a foundation there i do think that money is a topic that sometimes isn’t touched upon at school um or if you didn’t go to art school what you could do instead is just reach out to people and ask for help um you know illustrators are a group of really kind and generous people i feel like and to be able to reach out to someone who’s working right now and has a knowledge of how the industry is hoping that they might have some time to give you advice um or professors your peers i think reaching out and asking for help was very helpful for me yeah i agree being willing to talk to others is okay um i will say just to get technical about it if anybody’s professors hasn’t talked to them about this at very at the very least go and seek out this book oh crap is this gonna work i have to oh my god um it it’s the let me see if i can can i like change my background there the pricing and ethical guidelines book look this this book is not perfect but it will help you get started on the prices you need if you’re if nobody has told you about this in your art school i you know that that’s okay i’m not here to shade any school but go get this and at least we’ll get you started from there i think christina is really highlighting the key to all this though is be willing to talk to others i can also throw out another recommendation there’s a community source the rate finder called lightbox.info l-i-t-e and they have a lot of illustrators just throw on like how much they were paid for their jobs and it’s just the whole spreadsheet oh there you go light can you say that again l-i-t-e-b-o-x lightbox.info lightbox.info that’s great um all right there’s still more and for we can’t get to everything but let’s talk this this kind of summarizes some questions there’s two more um right now the state of the world okay um obviously we’re all living through something that we don’t we can’t be like oh yeah when i graduated um there’s not that but that’s okay and so i guess people you know it’s like what of this is it uncertain is illustration even still happening is the industry gonna die is you know has there been major changes in your workflow um i’m hoping i want us to be honest i think we could probably be reassuring to to everyone but um did anybody want to talk about that they’re still there they’re still making new art dave you’re still hiring illustrators jeremy you’re still hiring illustrators do you want to talk about that at all or offer offered pieces of encouragement possibly well i would say in in the midst of the coronavirus there’s a lot of emotions going on and i think art directors are looking for artists to express how we all feel so i think there’s a huge market for that right now and yes if you go to any magazine’s website or pull out a print issue all the stories are covered related but we are definitely still hiring folks and trying to find different ways to to express the virus because we’re past the point of just drawing the the thing with the spikes instead the red the red ball yeah so that’s what i would say yeah yeah i mean for better or worse there’s a lot of news going on right now and and uh can’t just be words so there there is going to be jobs in in that light but as far as like a grand scheme of things um this isn’t going to end illustration by any means i mean we had illustrators that had graduated during the the recession in 2008 and thought it was going to be over then and it wasn’t and it actually got really good and uh and it’s gonna be like that again art’s never gonna go away it’s what defines our culture so it’s always gonna be there and there’s always gonna they’re always gonna need people to create art that builds our culture and that’s what you guys are going to be that’s really that’s uh that’s really well put both of you that’s really nice um i agree i think in the sense of business and graduation and portfolios and your career i’ve i’ve tried to say over and over like it’s about a plan it’s about a plan your plan should be long term this is happening now but like what’s happening in five years what’s happening in 10 years um i hope that you’re thinking that far down the road yeah you know what it might be hard to get a day job right now you might have to do some things that you didn’t think you have to do you might have to go stay with a friend stay with a family member but it will come back and the illustration career again doesn’t happen overnight anyway christina didn’t get hired the day she graduated or i mean she probably did but i didn’t dave didn’t jeremy didn’t jeremy didn’t hear he was working corporate what does he know you know what i mean you’re not playing you’re not doing this for the day you graduate you’re doing it for the next day and the next day and the next day i think and i think the four of us are examples of that and we’re now all at different stages in our career and here we still are and i know that i’m the furthest along in terms of time but i know that all three of them have no i know plans to change or stop and if they do it’s going to because it’s a plan and that’s the point so art’s always going to be needed i think we should leave this topic at that um because otherwise we all just don’t know we’re all doing the same thing we’re just trying to figure it out so again we could keep talking for hours but i we kind of have to wrap this up let me just end on this one thing and i like to ask this i know it’s kind of generic but i think it’s important and if you can come up with something that’s great what is there what is something that you feel like you wish you were told when you were graduating or when you were in school that you didn’t know or that no one told you but that you could offer now something you wish that you’d heard anybody have any of that i feel like there’s a lot of it but i can’t think of anything right now um well i’ll tell you what i’ll step in with mine you guys can think uh that’d be helpful please something that i did uh that no one told me to do but for some reason i did it i mean i don’t i know why i did it and that was that when i graduated i literally i i wrote a business plan i looked at myself as like knowing that i was going to have to make the art i love but i had to put it into a place where i needed to get paid for it and so how that was a business and so i’m going to write a business plan and that business plan had kept me on it kept me like focused when i was worried or when i wasn’t working out so well whatever and i always went back to it and the biggest part of that business plan was goals um i just always writing that out was what helped me out drastically in those early years that’s a really good one i’ll take that one i mean this was something i was told and it’s a little less um like ethereal a little more like technical um save one-third of whatever you make on your illustration jobs and put it away as if that doesn’t belong to you money you’re talking about money money wise sorry um because i had to go on a payment plan to pay off my first year of taxes because i just spent all the money i made and so just remember that you’re gonna have to pay taxes on what you make as an illustrator and i’m sure someone actually did tell me that and i just didn’t hear it that’s a great reminder it’s a really good point don’t feel the pressure to have to say anything anybody else before we kind of wrap this up though i mean um it’s not necessarily about the business side but i feel like um no one really talked about how important community is and i know we talked about it quite a lot tonight um but just the fact that at least freelance illustration can be super isolating um and one of the advantages we have over say an office job or whatever the opposite of this is is that we can choose our work family you know the people around us and it can be really important because it is a very difficult career to have a support system um to keep you going through the tough times because there will be tough times yeah i think that’s that seems like a perfect way to end this actually jeremy unless you have anything to contribute then um no pressure well i guess i would just say that just sort of i wish i knew or was more reminded that illustration is a collaboration with the art director again and and that it’s not just we’re making art for ourselves but it is commercial art and that’s what distinguishes us from fine art and you know that that should be exciting for you if if this is going to be a long-term career so yeah i couldn’t agree more i couldn’t agree more well then with that everybody if we didn’t get your questions directly i hope we answered them in some way indirectly um thank you to all three of you for being here this was so wonderful for me personally but i’m no doubt that the community also got something so much out of it we have tons of questions tons of people paying attention so thank you and thank you to everybody that listened and tuned in um to the society remember the society of illustrators is a non-profit organization that still is out there fighting to make sure the illustration community has resources available to them uh and we uh we’ll do more of this and we hope to see you live and in person at the society uh when we’re allowed to okay uh so everybody take care be well and um we’ll see you again soon thank you everybody everybody thank you you

Order the best illustration at the best price for your business, your company, or to resell them on other sites that pay for the service at more expensive prices, earning the difference:

Quick and economical illustration – Click Here.