Transcription
(Music Playing) (Applause)
Hi, everybody.
I’m really excited to be here and not in America right now.
Oh, gosh. We won’t talk about it too much, though. Whatever. I mean, you guys know I am from the blue places, so that’s all that matters.
This conference has been so good. I forgot how much Marc really mixes it up with all different kinds of creatives. And I feel like I-- after Linda’s talk this morning and Jan’s talk, just everybody’s talk, I just felt so inspired. I particularly feel like Christine’s talk resonated with me about agency, because I’ve been on a bit of a personal life journey right now, realizing that maybe this is why I’ve created my own business and I’ve always worked for myself and I can’t work with other people. But I also recently realized that this might be the reason,
because I have recently realized I may be an ADHD person, according to my doctor, because procrastination is a tool, hyperfocus is therapy, and being able to endlessly shift focus is the only way to get stuff done. So being a solopreneur is excellent if you’re a person that needs to bumblebee from project to project constantly, so it rules. Speaking of, the topic of my talk today is crafting the life you want. And so I’ll basically be walking you guys through my career and how I ended up in this really sort of niche industry, and also just like why I’ve stayed independent and small this whole time, which has a lot to do with a lot of the things that Christine talked about earlier as well. Also, I just love Craig’s talk so much. I was able to see him talk in San Francisco when he came through, and he did one of his live art performances there. And it was unreal, because I felt like I was in a Freddie Prinz Jr. movie, watching what people perceive as art to be, and yet he somehow made this into a career. When you’re 12 and you dream of being an artist, you kind of envision what Craig is currently doing. And that’s so epic. Is anyone familiar with the band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard?
I went to go see them recently, and I had a similar feeling about seeing them. I’m like, this is what 12-year-olds dream of being rock and roll is about, and they basically just bigged themselves into adults that play 12-year-old 80s rock and roll in rules. Anyway, if you’re not familiar with that band, they’re insane. Please go see them.
I’m already on tangent, so we’re going to go long. It’s fine.
This is me as a small person.
Jeans are crazy. I look like all my kids as well. And I’ve always known I wanted to be an artist, and I specifically loved drawing letters as a little kid, too. My mom, because she’s a bit of a hoarder, saved all of my children’s books from when I was a kid.
And inside the book is written like, this book belongs to Jessica and Matt, my brother. So his name is just very low key and not very important on every book that has lots of fancy letters all over the interior.
And I just loved art growing up. I would do it all the time. My mom described me as being the dream child, because I would just sit in the corner and draw for six hours straight. Now I’m realizing that contributes to a little bit of who I am in terms of how my brain operates.
But I go through those moments of, am I an artist because I love art? Am I an artist because it’s therapeutic for me? Am I an artist because I love external validation? Because winning all of those coloring contests in kindergarten was really epic. And also getting all the adults to tell me I was really good at something was also great. So I definitely have those imposter syndrome moments when I go through and go, am I just doing this for the likes? And by the likes, I mean the nun in kindergarten telling me I was good at something.
But like most kids, I went through a period of trying to be cool.
So I tried really hard to be cool in middle school. This is a picture of me in my freshman year. I know it doesn’t look like me, but I actually have brown hair. And without glasses, I do look like this. I’ve looked like this since I was a child.
Age has changed me. But I am not a cheerleader. I can’t touch my toes very well. I’m basically an iron rod of a person because my ancestry is all like potato people.
I’m like German and Czech. And just we’re meant to be sturdy. We’re not meant to be bendy. And so when I tried out for the cheerleading squad, I didn’t make varsity. I didn’t make junior varsity. I made the freshman five, which were the five rejected people who only cheered at home boys basketball games. And that was it. And so it was just all the non-bendy people. So while I look like I’m very happy in this photo, it was actually more like this old tumbler. I don’t know if you remember this one.
Someone made a tumbler called Smile Like You’re Dead Inside. And it was all people taking pictures when you can clearly see the soul has left their body. And that was me.
But eventually, I did find my way back into art. I was in Catholic school at that time. And then I transferred to public school in order to more seriously pursue art because the Catholic school was basically where you fucked around and your teacher was in a blues band and only the football players took art. And so I transferred to public school so that I could try and take it more seriously. And I drew all the normal things that teenagers draw, which is like really moody self-portraits and fairies and things like that. Also, a lot of this, as you could imagine. You should know that this is alive and well. All the kids are still doing it. I decided the other morning that I was going to teach my kids how to draw the cool S. And then my daughter, who’s nine, was like, oh, I already know how to draw that. But you draw it a little bit different. And then we were comparing cool S’s. And now my five-year-old, who can barely write letters, is teaching all of his friends the cool S. So I’ve really infiltrated. I’ve decided that I’m going to give myself a tattoo because I have friends that started tattooing themselves for fun. And that seems like a stupid thing to do. And I’m 40 years old, and why not? And so I’ve decided my first stick and poke tattoo is going to be the cool S that I give myself. But I’m also collecting tattoos of pencils. So I need you all to vote of which pencil cool S I should get. I’m going to stand next to it, and you cheer for the one you vote as the one you think I should get. So option number one-- (Cheering) OK.
It was really solid.
Option number two-- (Cheering) Claire winner. Claire winner. OK, yay. You guys picked the same one that my seven-year-old picked, and I was going to be very happy.
I thought about being like, maybe I should get the seven-year-old to put the tattoo on me. And I was like, that’s a bad precedent to start. Do not do that.
I went to art school. This is some of my very early graphic design work. I thought I would be a painter. And then I took a graphic design class because at the time, which was the early 2000s, everybody took graphic design so their parents would buy them a computer.
That wasn’t me. I just took it because I wanted to try everything. And then I was obsessed with graphic design and creating things digitally, and it was awesome. My work has gotten a little bit better since then.
After college, I moved to New York. And this is like my formative years really happened when I was there. I lived in a loft in Williamsburg that was illegal and got to have that weird experience of being an artsy person in artsy places.
And it was really fun. I was working for Louise Feely at the time, who’s a really legendary graphic designer. And while I worked for her during the day, I was doing a lot of freelance at night because I discovered after college that I really was just meant to be an illustrator the whole time.
I love making images, and I think that’s what I went to school to do in the first place. But I really did fall in love with design and the idea of working on problems and problem solving and working with other people and not necessarily making work that was self-expressionistic all the time. And so I felt like illustration and particularly lettering, which I started incorporating more and more into my work, was such a good marriage of the things that I love to do.
But here I am at a web conference, and many of you may ask why. I spoke at Smashing Conference recently, and I used to do a ton of web-based projects, and I realized that that hasn’t been part of my bio for some time. And so one of the other speakers was like, this is great, but why are you here? And so as a refresher, there was a year which was 2011,
or 2012, and I made 11 websites in seven months or something like that. One of them was this website, Don’t Fear the Internet, which teaches basic HTML and CSS to non-web designers. Linda’s talk really resonated with me because of the whole idea of using these real-life metaphors for children, because one of my favorite videos we made was calling HTML a hamburger text markup language and describing all of tags as being bread and fillings, and that was really fun. And I also made the definitive Twitter how-to website, which people still reference, which I made actually for my mom in a non-misogynistic way. I just wanted to pull her off Facebook and onto Twitter. Now I’m not on Twitter, I’m on threads.
And my partner, who I’ve been with for 16 years now, we are married and have been married for 12 years, but we met randomly on the internet on match.com when it was weird to meet strangers on the internet. And we have been such a dream team because we have so much overlap in the things we’re interested in. And while I love to do a lot of my own development and things like that for my own sites, like Bastion from Kirby is here, and he and I have been on a years-long project of translating my Kirby 1.0 site to Kirby 28 or whatever it is now. And I would normally be able to do it myself, but I need him because we made this stupid URL structure thing. Like if you go onto my website, you can see that it says like, Jessica Hish is making fonts or like whatever. So the URLs are like funny. And I didn’t wanna name all my folders after what the URLs were, because it would be impossible for me to find stuff. But yeah, anyway.
But Russ and I collaborate not that much because he works at Meta now, but we had this big collaboration project other than our children, which was this wedding website.
So I was really intimidated to design my own wedding invitation because if you’re a graphic designer and you have a child or get married, everyone’s like, “Can’t wait to see your invitation.” And so rather than me designing it myself, I decided to outsource a lot of the work to my friends. So I commissioned all my illustration friends to make custom artwork for this website, which then we designed and built as a parallax site back in the day. And it’s still up if you wanna go see it, jessandruss.us.
It doesn’t work parallax on phones. So you’ll have to bookmark it for later if you wanna see that. But it was so fun and people like freaked out over it. And it became this really big project just because I was too intimidated to take it on myself. But the funniest thing that came of it is that the website Gawker ended up writing like a takedown about it.
And so, but my favorite thing was they compared it to two Wes Anderson movies fucking each other.
And they didn’t know that I had just done the titles for “Moonrise Kingdom,” the Wes Anderson movie. And I was a daily Gawker reader. And so I thought this was literally the best thing on earth. I was like, “I’m being roasted by my favorite website.” And so I put it on my CV and like blasted it out. I was like, “I have one at life, check it out everyone.” And then the internet got really mad at them because they were really mean in the article. And so they received so much like hate mail from random people that they wrote a retraction the next day.
Which was amazing because they never do that. And then also the commenters went apeshit at the author and was like, “You pussy,” you know, like whatever. And so it was just the most delightful week of my life. And so anyway, this talk is sort of peppered with little lessons. And so one of the lessons that I learned in that time was that I had to stop looking at what other people were do and look within. And I have to continually remind myself of that. All of my favorite work that I’ve ever made in my life are things that I just got really geared up about and decided that I wanted to make something about it.
Obviously the other way to say that is listen to your heart. A song I periodically get in my head.
My first big project like this was called Daily DropCap. And I illustrated a letter every day for 12 alphabets. And so this was before 336 days of type and a lot of those daily drawing projects. And I had it on Tumblr. And one of the things that actually got me involved in the web community was that I gave people permission to use them on their sites and gave them a little image tag to copy into their blog posts so that people that didn’t understand HTML and things like that could like instantly have a little CSS blurby that would put it in there in the right place. And people loved this and it was great. And it turned into a lot of awesome projects for me down the road. And I of course like didn’t do this in anticipation of that. But of course like you put yourself out there and you show the world things that you’re interested in, it comes back to you. And so I ended up doing this series with Penguin Books where they commissioned me to make 26 covers for a classic book collection called Penguin DropCaps. And so each cover is the first initial of the author’s last name that I illustrated to match the book itself. So this was a very busy year of reading because I do read all the books that I designed covers for. Except Moby Dick because I was like, it’s gotta be a whale, right? So yeah, it’s fine.
I became sort of like the fancy letter gal and got to draw fancy letters on a lot of things. Like I do a lot of not only letters, but words and phrases and all kinds of stuff. And you’ll see that. But I did this wine label series where I made an MV monogram for a bunch of different varietals of wine. This was an alphabet I made for the city of Orlando’s tourism bureau. And we’re not gonna talk about Florida right now. And this was an alphabet that I made for Neiman Marcus a couple years back as a part of a really big holiday campaign that I worked on with them. And so they commissioned a bunch of illustrations as well as a few custom pieces of lettering and then this alphabet. And we weren’t really sure what it was gonna turn into because it’s a weird thing. They basically like the core team commissioned the lettering pieces for use on like popcorn tins. And then they made a big suite of images that they were like, we just kind of show these to our third party people and see what they do with them. Sometimes they make stuff and sometimes they don’t. We know there will be socks. And I was like, sounds great, socks are good. And then they just started rolling stuff out. And it was like every single day was literally Christmas because there was like, oh, now it’s glassware. Now it’s a plate. Now it’s like a Santa cookie jar that’s made of my illustration.
And it was just day after day, more and more stuff. These are the popcorn tins that I did know were coming. But like all this candy and all kinds of things. And one of my favorites was they made PJs out of and dog PJs out of my illustrations. And this was so super cool because I got to buy them in every size for my children.
So this is them last year wearing their PJs. But the unfortunate unfortunate thing is that this one here is so fucking tall that she now is stealing my adult women’s ones. So I don’t have PJs this year because she’s so big that we now share clothes. And so the little peanuts are still gonna be able to wear them forever.
Another life lesson from just like all over time is that sometimes it’s not about the money and there’s different ways of phrasing this. I really like some for show, some for dough. That’s usually my favorite one. But I also like some for the glory, some for the story.
I got to do the invitation for CAA, which is the Creative Artists Agency. It’s a big talent agency in LA that manages a bunch of A-list people and everything. Their Friday night Oscar party. And so this did not pay a ton of money. And they were just like, we need you to not only design a web-based invitation, but also do all the MailChimp nonsense that nobody ever wants to do. And so I had to like design the email stuff and all this and the budget was like 2,500 bucks. It was like nothing. But as a part of it, I got to go to this Oscar party. And I thought it would be like going to like a massive conference. Like, you know, when you go to like a big conference like Adobe Max and there’s like thousands of people and then there’s like a couple of famous people that you never actually get to see. But it was like at a mansion in the Hollywood Hills and it was like 100 celebrities and me. And that was it. And it was so intimidating. And I brought my husband with me who’s super introverted. Like he’s very social. If I told you that, you’d be like, no way. He’s so social. But he like is dying inside when he’s talking to strangers. And so we both were like the whole time at the event and I thought I would talk to the wait staff. I was like, let’s talk to the waiters. They’ll be nice, right? But have you guys ever watched Party Down?
So Party Down makes you understand that every waiter in LA is actually an actor trying to get work. And so they’re all beautiful. And looking at me like, get away from me, you plebe. And so we just kind of hung out and didn’t do anything. And I also realized like I realized this at this party, but also at like every other party, is that I tend to love to go to things by myself because it’s really easy to meet strangers when you’re alone. Like you can walk up to like anybody at a party if you’re by yourself and be like, hey guys, I’m alone. Can we talk? Can I be a part of your group? But if you and your husband approach a person who’s standing alone at a party, it has a really different vibe. And so then I’m so self-conscious. I’m like, oh, well, we can’t look like the weird normies that are also swingers at this party. So let’s just like hang out.
And it took until the fourth year going for me to talk to a single person.
But that year, the reason why I did is because I was like pretty pregnant with one-- I don’t remember which child at this point, but one of them was in there. And the key to meeting celebrities is being visibly pregnant. That is the rule. So if you ever go to a celebrity party, just buy a pregnant suit. Doesn’t matter what your gender is, especially in California. You’re good. And so just show up in a pregnant suit and you’re good to go. And so I was in line complaining about how my feet hurt and Scarlett Johansson was behind me and she didn’t realize I was pregnant. But then she kind of like saw and she was like, oh my god, it’s the worst, isn’t it? And then we just had this conversation about how being pregnant sucks for like 10 minutes and it was great.
So that’s my tips and tricks.
I also got to do some work for the postal service this year, which was really fun. I designed some of the merch for their big reunion tour. So this was a tote bag. Yeah, it was great. Yay.
Amazing.
I got to sit in the VIP section. It was really fun.
This was one of my most challenging projects that I did in the last few years, the brief was we need you to design a shirt that has all of the lyrics of both albums on the front of the shirt. And the type cannot overlap it so that you can read-- you need to be able to read all the lyrics really clearly. And I was like, how will they do this with Silk Screen? I do not know. And so this was the concept that I came up with, which was sort of like the two sides are like a sheet of paper being torn in half. And this was so fun because I just had to typeset it like a fucking nerd for days. And so you’ll notice no rivers, no orphans, and all but one hyphen. It couldn’t be avoided.
This was like at least four hours of work, me trying to get rid of that hyphen, and it just is there. But it was really cool. And then I got lots of fun images from people at concerts that were like, look, I got your shirt. I don’t think I have one yet because I ordered it. And they were like, it’s lost. I’m sorry. So still working on it.
How many people are parents in the room?
Yes, exactly. That’s why we’re all here. We’re all the same age. That’s why everyone’s like, let me tell you about my life transition. That’s like every talk because everybody’s 40 years old. And so when you have children and you are a creative person, one of the things that you do is that you look at all the ugly things that exist in their life and decide you need to make it look better. And so when my daughter was about to graduate preschool, the certificates that they had were literally some random clip art panda bear on an MS doc that was barely even typeset. And I was like, this will not do. And so I volunteered to redesign their certificates, which I then ended up rezoprinting and paying for that, and then also typesetting all their names and stuff because they had used some random-ass font. But as I was doing it, their logo was really ugly. And so I was like, I think I got to redo your logo too. So I did that for free. It’s fine. I asked for them. I asked if we could get tuition credit for me doing their logo since typically I charge actual money for logos. And they were like, do you know the state of child care in America? And I was like, whatever. It’s fine.
But I at least got a cool certificate for at least one of my children out of it.
Now they’re in public school, which I love, where you live in Berkeley, California. And their public school has an annual t-shirt contest. And I was like, I’m ready. I will step up to this plate. But I honestly was sweating it. I was joking on Twitter about how I was sweating about winning this t-shirt contest. And everyone on Twitter was like, what the fuck are you talking about? You’re obviously going to win it. And I was like, dude, you don’t know what the designs look like last year. This PTA is like a chaos agent. Like, who knows? It was like a world with a bunch of stick figures holding their hands around it. And I was like, they might not like this. Who knows? It might be a different vibe. But I didn’t end up winning. And then the next year, they were lazy and just reached out to me and another dad and were like, you guys do it. And then this year, I was like, I’m ready. Send it to me. Let’s do it. And I submitted. And I lost. And so I have to try again next year. But I had a friend that was on the PTA judging board. And she was sending me all the designs, being like, is this yours? Is this yours? Is this yours? And I was like, people have stepped up. So I think all the design moms and dads were like, well, I guess we’re going to submit now, because it seems like it’s turning into a real contest. And so I should just put the thing out to you guys. And you guys should randomly submit. I don’t feel like you have to be a parent to like--
they’ll just suddenly get like 350 entries of all actual designers. That would be amazing.
So Work begets Work is another one of these little lessons. I ended up, like I said, doing the titles for Moonrise Kingdom, which was a total fluke. They had hired another calligrapher to do the titles. And because Wes, as you could imagine, has extremely specific ideas about what he wants things to look like, a calligrapher abides by rules. There are rules to calligraphy that involve trusting what the mechanism that you’re writing with is doing. And I think he wanted them to unmake those rules. And eventually, that relationship broke down, and they needed someone who could be more flexible. So I was like a random last minute pinch hit on this. And it was amazing to be able to be a part of. And I got to work with him directly, because that’s how their team works. Typically, when you’re working on title stuff, you’re working with a production company or a VFX company. But their team is all very insular, and they just keep working with the same people over and over again.
And that project for sure is what got me to be able to work on the Wonder Years logo for the reissue of the Wonder Years. But then I posted this like months, years after I did it, because I’m really bad at posting things to the internet in a timely fashion. And the day that I posted it, the creative director from Lionsgate reached out that they had been trying to work on the titles for Are You There? Got It To Me, Margaret. And it just happened across her plate right at that moment. And she was like, oh, this is exactly what I was thinking about, something within this vein. So it’s like you kind of forget how much power you have to put out the thing you want to get back, and that it actually is important to share. I feel like we get kind of sad about algorithms and things like that. But it sometimes does turn into good things. So you just have to keep putting yourself out there and realizing that while it’s not going to be super transactional, one to one, every now and then, those stars align at just the right time. And so just telling people that you’re alive is a way to keep that work flowing.
And I ended up making a full typeface for this. I love doing type design as a part of projects, but not really professionally, because I am afraid to release fonts into the world, because they exist forever. Imagine if the code that you made now is what people judged you on, like, 25 years into the future. And that’s how typefaces work. So it has been a minute.
Another little lesson of the time is that you can’t do it all, and that’s great. I think this is one of the things that I struggled with when I was younger, is feeling like I needed to be great at absolutely everything that I did.
And the longer I’ve been in my career, the more I’ve really loved being more of a specialist and having that specialty be something that people reach out to to collaborate with.
I really feel for younger folks right now, though. But because software and technologies have evolved so much, I do feel like more is asked of them. They’re expected to do everything end to end, rather than understanding that things should happen through a collaborative and iterative process. And so these pieces that I did with Starbucks, this was a team of 10 people, because the thing that I delivered to them was this. So I gave them typography. They then made molds and then cast white chocolate in molds, and then had a photographer shoot them, and then had post people manipulate them, and all that. And people approach me all the time citing those ads and being like, we want this. And I’m like, that’s a bunch of people that did that, so I can’t do it all. But I feel like there’s this illusion that we can do it all now that is tough. And I think it’s important to push against that, because not only should you not have to do it all, but the work suffers if you’re not collaborating with other people. I do think that, well, I love to be my own business and things like that. And I certainly do a lot as a person who owns their own business. Without that collaboration, I would never have those moments of surprise and delight when people take things further than I could think to take them.
And a couple of my favorite examples of that were I did this work for Chopard, where I did the lettering pieces, and then they animated them. And this little moment where this arrow comes in right up here, I squealed at my desk. And if I was doing it all on my own, I wouldn’t have the squeal time. Sometimes you need someone else to show you what your work can be and do.
And I had made a typeface years ago called Snowflake, which was just meant to be like a cut paper typeface.
And it took me no time at all to do. It’s like just an uppercase and lowercase alphabet, a few punctuation marks and some numbers. But Wilco had reached out, because they felt like it was perfect for this album that they were working on that Lawrence Azarad was putting together all the graphics for. And this is in my like, sometimes things don’t pay category. But Wilco tried desperately to pay me lots of money for this. They kept being like, clearly we owe you lots of money. And I was like, I don’t know, read the Yula. What does it say? I’m like, do you have enough licenses for the people that you have? They’re like, yes. And I was like, seems like you’re good. And they’re like, but we must owe you thousands of dollars. And I was like, I guess I don’t think you do. But it was really cool to see it all roll out. They ended up cutting this massive backdrop. This was all cut by hand by someone.
And then using it on their LP and in a bunch of stuff. And this is something that I would have never envisioned that this font could be used for. And that’s something that’s so cool about being someone that makes something and then kind of like lets the world use it. And I know that a lot of you probably understand that too, from like GitHub and things like that. You know, like you just make a little thing and then people run with it. And the places that they take it are so beyond your wildest imagination.
One of the things that I do that really highlights the fact that I don’t try to do it all is my logo work that I do. Because while I can do logo, like extension work and all that, I was at one time a graphic designer. I don’t really enjoy it. What I really love is that sort of like nerdy specific process of working just with the letter forms. And so most of the logo work that I do is logo refresh work, where I’m taking an existing brand and sort of tweaking it and manipulating it to solve problems for the client or kind of make it feel a little bit more modern. And I love this work so much because it’s a way for me to work with really big brands but really just have it be me. Like I don’t have to scale into a giant branding studio because brand studios come to me for my specific skill set. And sometimes there’s like-- it’s a really, really light touch, like Eating Well and Southern Living. We’re really just about like, can you make this feel a little bit more considered? This one felt like a little heavy handed in 90s, and they wanted it to feel a bit more modern. RetailMeNot had a lot going on, so that was a fun one.
But it’s just really fun to be able to touch so many cool brands, like the Jenny’s logo, which is an ice cream company in the US that’s really quite well known. They had one of the most hilarious briefs because there were clearly some design issues that we had to solve, like this big pocket of white space that was underneath here. But one of the main things they needed to fix was the fact that it looks like it says penis.
So they were like, can you make it not say penis? And I was like, absolutely. That’s like, you know, chief design brief is make it not be a penis, right? That’s like one of the first things that you think about when you’re making it, does it look like a penis? Does this look like penetration in some way? Like that’s like a big-- like ask yourself this question as you are about to send something off to a client or post it to the internet. And so someone at some point thought it was a real good idea to put that apostrophe on top of the eye. And I was like, I’ll just move that over if we’re going to fix that.
One of the more exciting ones I got to work on was rebranding Squire, which is Fender’s lower end guitar company. And I got to go to the Fender offices. And I got paid in guitars a little bit too, which my husband super liked. That was great.
And it’s also like just-- it’s just really fun to work on both legacy brands, like things that people have a real attachment to, and then also brands that you sort of have a personal attachment to. Like I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the General Insurance, but it is a US insurance company for old people basically. And when I was a child, I would be at my Nana’s house like sitting in her living room endlessly watching television. And there were these cheesy commercials for the General Insurance with this like little badly animated general guy that was like, call the general, save some time or whatever. And I just remember it so clearly. So when they came to me for a logo refresh, I was like, holy shit, it’s the general. And I was like-- it was like a celebrity to me. And the team was like, whoa, did not expect that reaction. But it was like really-- I told them, I was like, this is a joy. I’m so happy. And so they were really stoked. And I think that’s one of the things that people don’t understand. They’re like, what’s your dream client? And no one would ever anticipate me to be like the General Insurance.
But everybody has their own things that are uniquely personal to them. And when you get to work on those things, the amount of energy and joy that you get from it is through the roof.
So moving on, I am mildly nervous about AI. Not in like a I’m a Luddite and anti-technology kind of way, but I feel like AI has a lot of impacts on commercial art. Most of the super proponents of AI talk about how AI is going to save art, because people will appreciate things done by human hands. But it has more to do with fine art than it does with commercial art. And I’ve just seen how influencer culture has affected commercial art. And I feel like it’s going to exacerbate that. So I have some personal solves for trying to cope with that. So one of my coping strategies is making more physical work. You’ve seen a number of people talk about this today. I do a lot of printmaking for fun. And I own a lot of printmaking equipment.
And I’ve never considered myself a printmaker, but I guess I am, because I have a letterpress. I have a foil-stamping machine. I have a Risograph. I have all this stuff. It’s like literally Barbie’s Creative Dreamhouse at my studio.
And I’ve just been trying. And I’ve always loved making physical things that exist in the world, again, because so much of what we can do is ephemeral. I think Linda talked about this, that it’s amazing to make a thing that you know is going to live on for a little while. And so I love printmaking.
Another coping strategy for both AI and algorithmically curated social media is embracing more IRL and small community rather than thinking about global community all the time.
And so my version of doing that has been a bunch of things. I’ve been really investing more in my newsletter, which if you subscribe to my newsletter, it is quite silly, because I’m both in a public beef with my seven-year-old about him getting his orange belt and karate and me failing it, and then also sharing about work stuff. So it’s pretty fun. But I really like how it just feels like I have a bunch of internet pen pals again, which is how early internet felt to me. We were all just in this big chat room instead of it just being a big advertisement for everything that we were doing. And then another thing that I’ve done is I open two brick and mortar stores. One is below my studio, and it’s called JHNF, Jessica Hish and Friends. And then another one is called Drawling, which is how Philadelphia people and children say drawing. And so that one is an all-ages art supply store. And I’m really into physical spaces, and I’m a really insane shopper. I spend all of my time going into boutiques and things like that. And so it was a real, real fun thing to design and curate. And there’s so many things that I get out of the experience of owning a store. For one thing, it makes me look like a badass, because so few people do it, even though it is not a moneymaker.
And being able to really design the space-- and I worked with the architect that designed my studio to make a lot-- but I designed the desk myself and everything. And it’s just really nice to have a place to both showcase your work. And I think I’d talk about this in the slides, but it’s like a test kitchen for me wanting to make new things as well. And so I sell both prints of my own stuff, like artwork that I make, but then also things that I curate for the shop. And the rule for something to be in my store is that it has to have both beauty and utility, because I’m really focused on that myself with my work. I don’t like to make frivolous artwork. This is why I’m not on the internet making a bunch of live, laugh, love posters and stuff, because to me, it’s not joyful for me to make stuff specifically for other people to consume online. It’s like, I don’t like that. But if someone comes to me and says, we have a problem to solve, and it’s called make a live, laugh, love poster, I would be like, yes. Thankfully, I’m so useful to you. And now I can do that thing that you’re specifically asking me to do and not that I’m doing for no reason whatsoever. And yeah.
And that’s why I keep working with clients. A lot of people, their dream is to eventually move to the woods and never talk to people again. And I love working with clients. It’s so fun for me. I feel like every day is a weird lottery where things just drop in front of me and I go, ooh, yay. I never thought that was going to happen. And even when they’re not very exciting to other people, I just love the surprise of it. And I love the collaboration. And I also love that if I don’t like working with someone, they go away.
Everybody that has a real job, if you don’t like someone at work, you just got to make it work. You just got to deal with that annoying person forever, or until they move teams or whatever. But for me, I get to be like, it was a pleasure working with you. Fuck you forever. And then I just never have to see them again. It’s amazing.
And so like I said, it’s a great test kitchen for future prints.
So normally, I sell prints online. And selling prints online means I have to make a somewhat substantial addition. I have to photograph them. I have to figure out how I’m doing the fulfillment for it, make sure I have all my little baggies and stuff. But if I’m making stuff for the store, I can make three and see how they go. And so a lot of what I end up doing with my personal work is figuring out ways to reduce the friction between me and making something. Because I think that’s the thing that stops us. We have all this friction between wanting to make something. And the more aggressive you are about the things that you want to make, the more friction there is. Christine talked about it too, being able to code. And suddenly, you can do all the things yourself instead of having to hire someone to do it. And if you want to start a company, you don’t want to have to pay an engineer a six-figure salary to do some silly idea that might not work. So it’s amazing that you can do a lot of the things yourself.
It does give me something to post on Instagram, which is nice.
It exercises new parts of my brain. Like I said, I have a very active brain. And I like to bounce around to a lot of different things. And I don’t like to just do one thing all the time.
It connects me to my local community. And that has been one of the most fun things, because I have a really niche job. And my job sounds really cool. But everyone just thinks that I have a rich husband whenever I describe it to people in a cab. They’re like, oh, yeah, that’s great for you being an artist in the Bay Area. And I’m just like, dude, my salary is the same as his. Whatever.
But as soon as they see I own a store, then all of a sudden, everybody’s like, I know where that is. I’ll visit your store. My mom loves that stuff. It just turns into this instant connection with people in your community that’s so fun and cool.
I can host events. People come. It’s nice. I’m very extroverted. I like to see people and meet people. It’s real.
It’s a sleeper cell for future work on locks. I just always think of ideas I can do. Puts a very little bit of money in my pocket.
And it gives me an excuse to shop for work. And I love shopping. And I shop all the time. This is the most dressed down I’ve been at a conference in some time, because normally I go all out. But it’s winter outside. And so I’m wearing actual clothes.
But sometimes, if you’re in Oakland, swing by, because my studio is upstairs. And so anytime you come to the store, you’ll be like, is Jessica upstairs? And the answer is yes. And then I will come down and say hi. So the end.
I was posting about-- speaking of the election and stuff, I’ve been posting other coping strategies. So these are coping strategies. But these are some of my election coping strategies that I’ve come up with. I think I’m going to come up with some new ones every day.
So my favorite of this one is giving myself a stick and poke tattoo, but completing it one poke per day.
Or doing an ill-advised slash proven harmful juice cleanse. So we’ll work on those. And then these are my posts from today. You guys might appreciate the last one, which is to text a friend I haven’t spoken to in 10 years, 80085, with no other content.
If you are of a certain age, you understand what that means.
Anyway, it says boobs in lead speaker, whatever. I had a pager when I was in middle school.
Or program my V drum set to play various fart sounds to please my children. That would be another one.
So another important coping strategy just in life and for carving out your career is asking yourself what really matters and making it a priority. So like I said, I have three kids.
Having children really turns your whole world upside down in a lot of ways.
It completely rejiggers your relationship to your work in ways that I find to be very good. I think when you’re really passionate about the work that you do, it’s really easy for it to become the only thing that you value yourself against and the thing that brings you your only source of joy.
And then we all sort of hit this burnout with it like 10 to 15 years in. And then all of a sudden you have a big existential crisis because everybody burns out overdoing the same thing for 10 to 15 years, no matter what.
And the timing of starting a family with this was both a complete throttle where it almost broke me, but it also reminded me that the reason why we do what we do is to live the life that we want to live.
And so I really think about that in terms of the projects that I take on, in terms of the way I shape my business. It’s all meant to create the life I want because the more I would talk to startup founders and people that were what I perceived as being like truly successful, like people that did have those exits, people that did big, big global stuff, when they talked about what their next thing they wanted to do was, it looked exactly like what my life is right now. And so it was like a really crazy moment to understand and to feel gratitude for the fact that I have what so many people want to have, which is just independence, autonomy, the ability to take on the projects that they want, the ability to take a day off if their kid’s sick, the ability to go to all the pageants or whatever the performance is, to be the chaperone for the trip to Sacramento
but still be able to be here in front of all of you guys and talk about having an actual career. And so it definitely was just such an amazing gratitude moment. And it made me really want to focus on making work that mattered to me, but to me specifically, because I think it’s also easy to get on a train where you think about making work that matters and you’re thinking about what matters to other people versus yourself. And so these kids obviously matter a great deal to me. They all say they’re gonna be artists. This is my oldest a year or so ago and then my youngest who’s now five. And they all say they want to be artists when they grow up, but I really believe that the younger one will be because five minutes later, this was him at the gallery.
And so he was like shirt off, flower in his hair. He’s gonna be in some weird poly commune when he’s at like UC Santa Cruz or whatever. And I don’t think he has like designer energy as much as he has maybe like sculpture and performance art energy, we’ll see.
I also make jokes that he’ll have a hard time being successful because he’s just too happy. Like I think in order to be successful, you have to be like a little bit dissatisfied with everything around you. And my daughter has that in spades. She’s gonna be an outrageously successful person. She always is like, yeah, but what about this? Like for absolutely everything? I’m like, dude, you’re too young to be this jaded.
So when she was little, I saw so much of myself in her though. Like I still see a lot of myself in her which is terrible for my husband because we’re both like the most ridiculous pet ants you ever met in your entire life. Like anytime he’s doing anything that both of us are like hovering over his shoulder being like, are you sure you don’t wanna do this this way? And he’s like, God damn it. And so it’s gonna get worse and worse. But when she was about four, I saw that she was struggling with the same perfectionism stuff that I struggle with, just needing to be good at everything and wanting to immediately move on from something if it doesn’t click right away. And so I really wanted to make work that was for her which is how my original, my first two children’s books kind of came about tomorrow I’ll be brave and tomorrow I’ll be kind.
So tomorrow I’ll be brave is all about actually self forgiveness even though it’s this really aspirational book. So it says tomorrow I’ll be adventurous, I’ll be strong but in the end it says, and if I wasn’t one of them I know it’s okay. And so it’s really this like end of the day like setting intentions, reviewing intentions and forgiving yourself for all the things you couldn’t be. And then tomorrow I’ll be kind is a little bit different. It’s very much that metaphor of like put on your mask before helping others. Like once you are good, once you feel strong once you feel confident, you’re in a place where you can do small things to help change the world and help others. And just teaching kids that like little things are the things that matter that you don’t always have to be like shooting for the moon anytime you’re trying to be a good person or make change in the world.
And then with my third book, like my books have sort of grown with my children. So that’s one thing that you notice when you’re a parent and you’re making stuff for kids. Like you get so amped on making stuff for babies when you have a baby and like thank God you don’t start a baby company when they’re a baby because you’ll be like, I never want to look at baby stuff again the second that they turn three. And so but as a children’s book author and illustrator I’ve been able to sort of like see what they are into and then scale my books up based on their interests even though they think I’m lame and they’re like in the world of Dave Pilkey or whatever now like the dog man and like all that.
So this book, I really had to shift my style around because I wanted it to be a lot more complicated
to match sort of the age that they were at where they were looking for more in the books that they were reading. They wanted more narrative, they wanted more detail. And so I used to just create all of my art in Adobe Illustrator. And for this one, I really started integrating a lot more hand drawing, which I’m doing in Procreate but it’s like basically hand drawn because I just use the 6B pencil and that’s it.
And then all of the artwork has a very different flavor and vibe than my first two books. And I feel like it took me a long time to get to this as a style of working within. It took working through a couple of books but now I’m really stoked about being able to work in this way and I feel a lot more confident in my ability to actually like physically draw and I didn’t feel that before. So to kind of show you how my process works for a spread like this, I start with a sketch. And so this is my initial rough sketch for this which takes place inside a library. The letter U talks out loud and all the letters inside all the books say shh at the same time.
And then because I am a perfectionist, I bring that into Illustrator and draw the structure of it all as vector, very symmetrical lines. But then I bring that into Procreate and trace it and then freehand all the details.
And so the three days or so of me drawing every single little book in this spread was like the best three days of my life.
I was speaking at another conference and a friend of mine who we’ve known for a very long time showed an early illustration that he did and it was like hundreds of little blades of grass and he talked about how it was absolute torture. And I immediately followed up being like, I listen to a podcast, it was work spa, it was so good. And so to each their own, I think that’s one of the things that’s important to remember as people who like build software and like do things to help other people in the world is that don’t yuck someone else’s yum. Like some people really love to do things the sloggy long way because it’s like therapeutic and awesome. And so leave room, leave space for that for the people that want it.
And then my most recent book, which is called my first book of fancy letters just came out two weeks ago.
Yee.
I have something like 50 copies with me and I will do a signing after this. And if I sell out of those copies, I have little book plates. And also if you have any of my other books at home or wanna buy them elsewhere or whatever, I will sign a book plate and I make your name look real fancy, so you’re gonna wanna do that.
But I love this book. It’s again like that evolution of my style where I’m mixing together hand drying and vector artwork. And I’m gonna have Toby back me for this next one here since that’s a thing I now know we can do. So this is a little, if I can get it to play here.
(Upbeat Music)
This goes on for two and a half minutes. So I’ll just talk over it a little bit and then eventually advance the slides.
(Upbeat Music) Anyway, so I start out with a very skeletal form and then I start drawing on top of them to add weight and characteristics.
And I jump around with style to make sure that it’s all lots of varieties and also blur my eyes to make sure I have enough contrast between thicks and thins and all the different letter forms.
But this was very intuitive to make. I wasn’t making a big plan in advance. I just kind of started drawing and then let the letters tell me what they wanted to be, which is actually how I work a lot is just sort of listening to what the project wants or listening to what the letter wants from me.
That’s probably enough of that.
So anyway, thank you, Toby.
(Audience Applauding)
I’ve never had a live DJ of my work before so I was like, gotta do that.
Thank you, technology, for failing everyone else here. That’s great.
So when was the last time you had a children’s book read aloud to you? I think probably a minute ago, yeah. So I’m gonna read you guys a book. It’s very short.
So it’s dedicated to my kids and also every letter who loves drawing their names extra fancy.
So did you know letters come in all shapes and sizes?
Letters can be athletic, bubbly, or even creepy.
Some are dreamy, others are electric. They can even be fancy and flowery.
Some letters are giant, some are opposites like hot and icy.
They can be jeweled, knit, or lacy.
Magical, neon, or old fashioned.
Letters can be prickly like a cactus or quilted into a blanket. They can be every color you imagine, even rainbow.
Some are short and sweet, some are tall and towering.
One thing’s for sure, every letter is unique. Whether they’re vivid and vibrant, wiggly and wavy, x-rayed, yummy, or zooming like a race car, each and every letter is awesome.
The end.
(Audience Applauding)
And it’s been super cool to see the reception that kids have had for the book because my publisher was like, who is this for? Your friends? And I was like, no, it’s for children, I swear. I have them, I know what they need. But one of the things that I loved about the book that’s a bit of an Easter egg is this last page which explains what I do for my job, which is to draw letters like the alphabet all day and I get paid to do it. When I visit schools, you know they have like career day and stuff. The kids are always blown away because I’m like, did you know that you guys could quit school right now and have my job? Everyone knows how to draw the alphabet, right? And they’re like, and I’m like, you’re a lettering artist, the end.
But then I give them this little assignment at the end which is to go into the world and take pictures with your mind, not with a camera, and then go home and draw those pictures from memory and they will not look like the thing that you saw and that is amazing and that’s what makes your art unique. Sort of giving kids permission immediately to like make things that don’t look exactly like the thing that they saw and that that’s the thing that actually sets their work apart. And the other really fun thing that’s been great with this book is that kids always wanna find their letter, of course, which I don’t know why I didn’t anticipate it, but like it happens. And so this is my son, George, son in quotation marks. And so he, it was immediately like, oh, well George, I’m G, like that’s the G, but really I’m more of a J. And I was just like, of course you are. And so children are now using this as like a Myers Briggs basically.
Like they go through the book and they’re like, yes, yes, yes, of course my name begins with R, but check out that C, that’s really my vibe. And so that’s been really fun.
And so I’ll leave you with just one more thing, which is that it’s hard to be a person. It’s hard to live in a world in which people make extremely poor decisions that affect the entire universe and it sucks. And it’s hard to be from that place and then travel throughout the world and have people be like, you know? And one thing that I have to remember as an artist is like, I’m super busy, I’ve got three little kids. I feel like what we do sometimes as artists and creatives can feel like a really selfish profession. We’re like helping people sell stuff. We’re not like out there, like stomping around, doing the things on the front line. Like my family would never forgive me if I was like the person in front row at the protest because they’d be like, that’s not safe. You have three children, what are you doing?
But one thing that like when these sort of hard things happen, the thing that I remind myself is that like, some people are born to save the world. Like their actual calling is to go out and do those one-on-one things, like to be the doctors, to be the first line workers, to be the person digging the well, to do all those things. And some people are born to show people why the world is worth saving. And I think that’s our job as creative people is like if we just shut down and stop making beautiful things and stop pointing at all the stuff that’s worthwhile, then the people that are actually out there capable and wanting to make that change will be demotivated and they won’t be able to do it. Like we have to show people that the world is worth fighting for.
So anyway, thank you.
(Audience Applauding)
