10 years a maker: Part three.
what design has taught me about life, and life taught me about design
Over the last two weeks I’ve retraced my steps as a designer from the earliest days of my career to the more recent ones.
I shared the highlights and milestones, and stories about how I got where I am today as a designer. I saved the best for last in this “10 years a maker” series: these are 10 lessons small and large that design has taught me about life, and life has taught me about design.
But first, an announcement.
To honor a decade of my design business, I’m opening my Etsy shop for an art flash sale for one week only. Visit my Etsy shop this week where everything is 10% off! No code needed, it’s already applied at checkout.
Thanks for your support. The profits will support my sabbatical next month. You can read more about this fundraising approach and my plans in “A New Offering”.
Anyone who makes art is an artist. The way you become a real artist is to make art, make anything. You do and name yourself an artist. Tell people you’re an artist. Claim the title - you have intrinsic permission.
Then, keep creating. If you’re doing the creating, you’re the creative. It doesn’t have to be good, or finished, or marketable, or praise-worthy. It just has to exist by your hand (or however you create.)
Then, release it. Sharing it can help it feel real, tangible. It can help you believe enough to embody the title. Why else does sharing matter? Shipping your creative work gets it into the lives of those who need it most. And that moment of connection may just be how you’ll find the courage to stay a real artist.
Limitations are essential in design. There’s a spectrum here, of course. On one end you can have no limits, no budget, no scope of work, no vision of what to move toward. A blank canvas scares everybody – even me. “Make whatever” is a recipe for disappointment on all sides. Some people who say they don't care may actually not know how to articulate what it is they care about. “Do whatever you want” is rarely what they actually mean. There’s a difference between not caring and not being able to voice what you care about, and I’ve learned to tease out this distinction by asking better questions.
On the other hand, there can be too many restrictions: not enough time, not enough resources, too much input from too many sources, an inability to hand over creative license. This is when we’re strung too thin in an area and an artist can’t deliver their best work because of it. Creativity can be hindered by too many limitations.
A few parameters help define goals and build out some definition. As the designer, it’s been my job to satisfy the reasonable requirements while creating something that balances efficacy and beauty. What is it they say about everything in moderation?
My best creative problem solving occurs at the crux of a limit and an idea – in design and in life.
This just may be my secret sauce in both designing and in business.
In design, the trick to making something really simple look really good is to align the elements. Align a logo with the body text instead of throwing it in the corner. Align images with your margins. Align text baselines across columns. This may take skill and intuition, but it can be learned. When things aren’t aligned, even the most untrained eye can tell something’s off. Alignment can make it feel whole.
In business, I want to build partnerships that have positive impact. I want to be on board with the heart or mission I’m helping to communicate. I want to collaborate with trailblazers who encourage flourishing in communities through design, connection, images, and story. I want to practice compelling visual storytelling for humanitarian organizations because I want to make an impact. This requires knowing what I want to align with to ensure that happens.
I learned this concept from Katie Macc at a women’s work conference. She says in a career, there will be times to flare (branch out, diversify the portfolio, widen the scope) and times to focus (zero in, develop expertise, narrow the lens). I have found this to be profoundly true and helpful. When I can name the season I’m in, it takes the pressure off to only work or be one way and I can say “yes” or “no” to the right things.
In work, I have zeroed on organizations with social impact. I have honed expertise in publications for print, event collateral, digital campaign branding, and visual branding and logo design. And also, I’m exceptionally good at intricate maps and complex non-profit Annual Reports. That’s focus.
I have flared as far co-producing and art directing the documentary Pendulum (directed, shot, produced, and co-edited by my husband, Lane Mathis) and designing the movie poster. Other than the poster design, it was all new work and skills for me that I truly enjoyed gaining, but I am not on a path to become a filmmaker anytime soon.
Often these opposing trajectories lead to new ideas and lessons I wouldn’t have wanted to do without, and other times they become disruptive and aimless. The goal is to know when it’s right to keep flaring or keep focusing, and when the flare or focus aligns me to the right things. The wisdom is to know which direction I’m headed, and to live it with intention.
There is a concept in art called the hand of the artist. It’s the moment or mark that reveals humanity in a piece of art. The hand of the artist points to the someone who brought the creation to life. They’re the scratches on the plate. They’re the handwritten words or signatures. They’re the signs of tools used. These imperfections and quirks are the pulse, a heartbeat, the proof of life.
I was originally drawn to graphic design because I can be a bit of a perfectionist. With the use of design software, I can make something technically “perfect”, down to the very last pixel and precise color formula. But does that mean it’s actually perfect, or even any good? Design is more than just numbers. It requires an artist’s “hand”.
A designer develops hard and soft skills, curates a process, shapes an intuition, evolves their biases. It’s impossible for me to work without these and each one has a way of leaving traces on all I make. That subjectivity is what I love about design now: that the hand of the artist tells the story of a body of an artist. It says somebody made this. I say curiosity, surprise, and humanity have a place on the page. The hand of the artist is what makes art art. I like evidence of a maker in art and in life.
Have you heard of my “I hate it” phase? It’s the barren wilderness in the middle of the project where doubt and panic grips my body and I have to talk myself back into work as if I’ve never designed a good thing in my entire life. During this part, I forget why I started. I have sudden loss of memory of every design principal and every element of art. I hate what I’ve made so far. I’m certain the final product will be terrible. I want to break the contract. I can feel shame, like I’m an impostor and what was I thinking when I took this on?! It’s a hard, parched place to be. And it’s part of the process. I know this now. I have years of practice traversing this part. It always comes. Always.
The goal can never be to prevent the “I hate it” phase. That would require perfection, which suggests that I never work again because I’m prone to this exact curse (and melodrama.) The goal is that I keep going. Keep clicking and drawing and writing and sketching. Remember the muse is a trickster, just like Liz Gilbert said. Cuss or cry if I have to. Reevaluate life decisions and look into barista jobs, or even grad school programs if it gets real desperate. Get all the bad design ideas out – try every last one of them. Make sure they suck, just like I thought they would. Stare out into space and pour another cup of coffee. Or quit… but just for the night. When the fit is thrown and done, get back to work. Find a way – any way – to keep digging into the output.
Eventually, the wellspring will come. It’s in there. It doesn’t dry up. Once I tap into it, I will realize this was the journey all along. I’ll catch a “happy accident” or swap perspective that helps me see the solution. I might just find flow again. Then I’ll pull it off and wonder why I ever doubted.
I know this process. I’ve been here. It’s my training. It’s my gut. It’s my persistence. It’s simply who and how I am. I’m an artist because I make art. Which means I’m certain to end up here again. I’ll cycle through this process over and over, for this is how any hard thing gets done.
My field doesn’t require a license or endorsements, no CEU’s or recerts. It’s up to me to keep educating myself and seek learning opportunities. I have to get curious and wander where it leads; keep what I need to carry forward and leave behind the bits that don’t serve me. I have to commit to remain a student.
It just may lead me to refugee camps in the Middle East or the saddle of a horse deep in the Teton Wilderness. It may lead to publishing a newsletter to develop my writing craft in front of an audience. It may lead to the launch of an Etsy shop to sell artwork to fund a sabbatical that will allow me rest and sustainability. It may lead to a series about 10 years of work where I have to become a student of my own past, excavating memories and lessons in order to celebrate and share them.
A couple weeks ago when planning this “10 Years a Maker” series, I decided I wanted to include handmade elements in my storytelling of my very digital career on this very digital platform. I added torn page elements to photos and graphics and wondered if I could create a font of my own handwriting. Ten years ago, digitally building a font was a long, tedious process reserved for pro typographers and the ultra-ambitious designer. I identify as neither, and I assumed it was way outside of my wheelhouse. My process to include handwritten elements has always been archaic and scrappy: handwrite words on physical paper, scan to make digital, edit image to remove background, place in desired location. It was painfully cumbersome and never turned out exactly as intended. Not ideal.
I didn’t have the first clue about creating my own font, but I set out to investigate if technology had evolved and there was an easier way now. With a little searching, I found a template and an AI software that would translate my handwritten letters and symbols into a fully functional typeface I could install and use in any software. A student’s posture earned me a new skill and utilitarian font in my very own handwriting. It was a revelation – I’d been wishing I could create this font for nearly a decade. I’d just never bothered to learn.
This reminded me how a learner’s posture continues to offer me opportunities to grow, evolve, and change. In 10 years from now, I want to be a better designer, writer, and person than I am today. I want to discover ways to do then what I can’t dream of doing just yet.
I always want to chase that beginner’s panoramic view of possibility.
With cash money, please. Exposure and publicity and free products have never paid the rent. The practice of expecting artists and creators to work for free devalues not only the work of artists, but also the time it took to build their skills. It entirely erases the function of relationship, where we get to co-create together and co-mission together (commission: like, for pay!)
Design is both a service and a product. Majority of the time, I’m paid as a professional designer for what I’m producing AND for everything I know and all I access creatively and materially to serve the project. Sometimes I work for free/pro bono, and sometimes I work for organizations on shoestring budgets. They pay me in proportion to what they can handle and what I can offer to solve their problems. I'm generally willing to work at a lower cost for organizations that I align with who are making good impact on the world, not only their revenue. When I decide to work this way, it’s on my own terms and because I can afford it.
But there have been costs to that model. I continue to learn to value my own work enough to ask for equitable compensation and be willing to negotiate when there are limitations. For me, this long arc has generally bent toward goodness. But I’ve wondered about the impact these choices have had not only on my own career advancement and stability, but on others in my field as well. It’s hard to know the ripple effect of choices like these, or whether they have perpetuated an unjust cultural expectation of free work from artists. May it continue to trend toward fairness.
Artists should be valued for what they bring to the world. The world needs artists, and artists have to live to make their art. What we can’t afford is for artists to be all used up and to stop creating. What a tragedy that would be.
I want to live into generosity - what I can give, create, offer, make space for, show up with, make better. I want to live and work in the how we can make peace, how we can be better together, how we can lift each other up, how we can make the world more just and more beautiful. It’s so much richer than trying to prove that I’m making it. It is much more interesting to me than proving how great a designer or person I am. This shift requires radical generosity.
I have no tips on how to get wealthy as a creative, but I can tell you how to get rich: build a business with soul and be ultra generous. Does my generous, values-based business make more money than if I ran a high achieving, goal-oriented one? Yeah, no. Obviously not. I’m still beating the drum that begs artists be paid for work. Some of the toughest work of my career has been to figure out how to make money doing this. But I’m only 10 years in – I still have so much to learn.
I’m certain about this: I’ve never regretted being generous. It’s not the only way, but it’s a good one.
I’ve also never, ever regretted integrity, which is the quality of being honest and having strong principles. To me it means my external work matches exactly as I am in the backend, or in the private interior.
In digital design, there’s a backend. It’s where all the parts are constructed and assembled. They’re laid out on a particular layer in a particular order. This process can be clean, intentional, and organized, or it can be messy, impulsive, and unkempt. On the surface, there may appear to be no difference. It may still happen to display or print well. The problems with an unruly backend are unearthed when changes have to be made or another user steps in. Edits become complicated and unforgiving. Pieces get tangled, lost, or corrupted. Workflow gets disrupted. The work and the artist both suffer trying to sort out the chaos, like managing a Pandora’s box of exposed secrets.
Integrity (best employed from the beginning) disrupts the draw toward people pleasing, mismatched missions, and concealed bad habits. Integrity keeps me in touch with my calling. Living the way of integrity is how I’ve built a career based on my values. It's why I intentionally choose clients and partner charities whose integrity I can also stand behind. It’s why I create community where everyone can be their whole, true selves. Integrity is the way I belong to myself so I can continue to create and serve and make an impact.
Just as integrity is the key to a well-done file, integrity is the key to a meaningful life.
That’s a wrap on my “10 years a maker” series. Thanks for following along and helping me celebrate! I’d love if you’d share this post if it resonated with you.
Don’t forget to visit my Etsy shop this week to score some 10% off artwork and photography prints! You can also make a contribution directly to my Venmo and I’ll send you an original digital print to download as a thank you.
All the profits go to support my sabbatical in September.
And many more,
