Marc Johns is an illustrator based in Victoria, British Columbia. his illustrative work is whimsical, often accompanied by witty words. Marc tells us his background story, what led him to a career in illustration, how he works, and reminds us to have fun with what we do. He recently published a book titled The Daily Artist. it’s a drawing journal for anyone young and old.
Pencil or pixel? Pencil. I was a graphic designer for probably around 10 years, but I always drew as a kid, so when I started to get back into drawing in a big way, it was kind of my relief from graphic design. It was my relief to get away from pixels, making everything line up, so for me, it was always nice to get back into pencil and pens and then get the watercolors out and have things be a tiny bit messy and paint flow over the lines. I still love that and I think, when I stared there was a lot of vector illustration that was really popular. This would’ve been, well, I don’t know, probably like 2005 or maybe shortly before.
You mean like a lot of shapes and vector based, kind of the really clean stuff? Yeah, exactly. I used to do vector illustration, using Illustrator and I had a little Wacom tablet and stuff. It was fun and super practical because if something ever has to be changed or made bigger, it’s super easy, but I love the organic quality of a good line and I’m kind of obsessed with good lines.
It’s funny cause recently I’ve tried out to use brushes in Photoshop and I’m always impressed with what people are able to do now with custom brushes you can get and stuff. I just… I can’t do it. I’m just–I think I was no good at it, so I just stick with paper.
What is it about that that makes it really difficult to do try to use those, what I call, obviously digital brushes, but I kind of consider them, I don’t know, fake brushes? They’re just… it’s not the real thing. (laughing) I think part of my problem is I don’t have the right tools. I have a really old Wacom tablet and it’s sluggish, so maybe if I had a better tablet, it would be better. I sure as hell can’t draw with a mouse very well.
It’s so awkward, but I don’t mean to discount that way of working because there’s some people, who make some really beautiful work that way, lovely graphic novels that are made that way and illustration and poster and what not, so it’s great and I…
It’s one of the reasons–I’m sorry to jump in. My first thought was you just simply don’t get the same effect as your hand drawn illustrations with all this watercolor stuff in Photoshop and that kind of thing. Did you notice that instantly? Like it doesn’t work the same way? Yeah. I did and I think I sound overly romantic here, but there’s something magical just about a mark on paper and simple marks on paper. Scribbles. I love a really good scribble, you know?
Yeah. Whether it’s my kid or Jackson Pollock, there’s something beautiful about that and you can’t replicate that. I think everybody has a beautiful scribble.
And everyone’s different. Exactly, but I love to scan that and keep all of its imperfections. Blow it up and share it and look at it and look at it on a screen or with my drawings and stuff like that. There’s something that sort of comes alive there, whether it’s the imperfect watercolors or the cross hatching that every third or fourth, one kind of goes off the edge. I just leave it there. I clean up some of them, but not too much cause I want it to be truthful. There’s just something just sort of magical about that, especially now that so much of what we look at is perfected and cleaned up.
Yeah, absolutely, but also there’s this handmade quality that a lot of people seem to be looking for. There is. Yeah and you see it in the sort of return of the handmade, the hand drawn. It shows up in graphics in Starbucks and certainly heavily in Etsy or on Pinterest, you look at motivational posters and stuff like that. I’m also one… I like to pay attention to the trends, but at the same time I’m very leery of them and I don’t want to sort of jump on them or have my work kind of lumped in with it or merged with it.
I love hand lettering, but I’ve kind of resisted going too much into it. I keep to my simple handwritten style. Basically it’s almost like a font cause I do it over and over again and then I have a couple of block letters that I do. I pretty much just stick with that and others would say, “Oh, that’s clever. You’re keeping your brand really tight,” or something. It’s like, “No. It just works,” and I don’t want to kind of get lumped into anything else.
Do you take on clients that are so brand focused? Maybe the same ones that are saying the same to you saying, “Hey, you’re brand is to tightly knit, so woven together and put together.” Yeah, I do. I did freelance for years as a graphic designer and then I do do commissions as an artist and illustrator now. Sometimes editorial work for magazines and then sometimes stuff for companies, but I’ve been lucky that when they approach me, they find me. I don’t approach them and they like what I do and they just want me to do that, but for them, so I get leery when they start wanting me to sort of mix it with their brand or they’re essentially boring my brand to support their brand, then I get kind of leery.
I’m very comfortable with sort of the editorial illustration. I did a booklet for Google, Germany Google and thankfully, they could speak English. (chuckles)
They wanted my drawings to be weird and quirky like they always are, but just related to what they were talking about, so that was kind of a nice collaboration for lack of a better word. That’s fine. I’m comfortable doing things like that cause as long as people know what they’re getting into, when they approach me, most of the time, they’re smart people. They’re art directors, so they know when they’re hiring me, they’re hiring because I do this and they’re not gonna ask me to do something else.
Absolutely and that’s a good thing for anyone who’s looking for an artist to keep in mind. To keep in mind that this is the style that… if this is what you’re after, this is what you should expect to get, not a rendition or a version of it. Yeah.
You hear that a lot. “I really like your style. Can you do this on top of our logo?” Or something like that, right? Yeah.
It just doesn’t make sense. Yeah and I struggle with that sometimes because somebody will approach you and they like sort of whatever magic you’ve managed to create in your own work and they’re hoping that you can apply some the magic to what they do and sometimes it works and sometimes it really doesn’t.
For instance, a lot of my work has text, right? It’s a little image and then there’s the text and sometimes the text just describes what the image is, cause I find that funny, to state the obvious or what I’ve drawn is not particularly well-drawn, so I explain what I drew and then you sort of get it.
Whereas, a lot of times I get hired to do things and they’ve already got their text and it’s just my drawing, then it doesn’t always work as well. The humor is not there, but sometimes that’s fine because they’re not looking for humor. They just want like a little taste of what I do and I’m illustrating something to go with say a magazine article or something, so those things work fine.
Where do you get your ideas for the kind of stuff that you come up? It’s really witty, really quirky, as you said.
There’s a friend of mine, Andy J. Miller, he always talks about how he gets ideas in his dreams and those are his actual illustrations or what it comes out with what he does. Do you have a similar situation or similar experience with what you do or is it just kind of you think about something and you just put it out there? No, it’s a process of sort of collecting bits and pieces. I usually carry a notebook with me all the time and I have stacks and stacks of these. I probably have about 100 of them stashed away in various drawers. They’re little notebooks I make myself and I’ll just write things down, whether it’s…
How do you make them? I’m just curious. I have them right here. They’re basically like 8 1/2 by 11 sheets of paper and I’ll take about 10 sheets and then cut those sheets into three and then make like a notebook out of it.
Oh, wow. Sometimes I get carried away and I make the covers.
The cover was a map. Yeah. I had a vintage map, so I laid that out. I got carried away that day. I was procrastinating, but usually it’s just sometimes it’s a cereal box cover.
No way. Just for the listeners, you’re holding up, what’s the size of that? `That’s super cool. It’s just like printer paper, just regular, white, plain paper? Yeah, just regular, out of the printer and then I take a sheet of paper standing up and then I cut it in three.
Oh, I see. Sort of horizontally, then fold it down the middle.
You just staple the center? Then staple it, sort of saddle stitch it. I think that’s what that’s called.
That’s amazing. That’s exactly it. Yeah, but sometimes it’s just scrap paper cause I have a lot of scraps from when I ship my online orders. I print out the orders and there’s half the sheet that doesn’t get used, so I have stacks of those and I’ll cut those up into the notebooks. I don’t like throwing out paper. I carry those things around with me.
Wow, that’s neat. Yeah (chuckling)
Then I’ll write things down, whether it’s a weird words that I’ve heard or great expressions or it’ll be images or I think a combination of things like sticking legs on a toaster or something like that.
Yeah… (chuckling)
Or on a head (laughing) I’ll be walking around downtown here and I’ll see like a cool gig poster, but across the street, I can’t even tell what it is, but it’s kind of interesting composition. Let’s say it’s a grid of nine, I don’t know, record players or something like that, so I’ll see that and I’ll make a quick note of that saying, “Well, I like that. I should do a drawing with nine things.” It’s sort of half an idea and then eventually I’ll take that home and then I’ll have an idea for something else, say skulls and so I’ll make nine skulls, but then one of them is different. Now a story is starting to develop and then I’ll have some words at the bottom that’ll talk about why that one is different than the others or something like that. It’s sort of pieced together that way and then that’s where the ideas come from, really. Over time there’s certain elements that get repeated, obviously. It’s not because I’m lazy. I swear to God.
There’s a recurring theme that you want to use. Yeah, exactly or I’m not quite done with that yet. I do an elephant and it’s like well, that was really fun to draw, so I want to do another one or I liked how that looked, so I’ll think of something else how to use an elephant and I’ll just sort of play with it. The words are a big part of it too. I love language. I envy writers, who know how to use words so beautifully.
I hear you. I try to spend some time sort of editing down the words that go on the image and try to use as few as possible.
You mentioned gig posters. I take it there’s a pretty decent music scene out there. Our you in Victoria or are you in… I’m in Victoria. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a pretty decent music scene.
Oh, I wish I went to Victoria. I’ve been to Vancouver. I really wanted to go to Victoria. I heard so much about it. Maybe next I’m up North. You should, yeah.
Victoria’s a lot smaller and it’s a…
It’s an island, right? Victoria is on Vancouver Island, which is a pretty big island, but Victoria is actually the capital of our province, but I think it’s like the perfect size city. I lived in Vancouver for 10 years and it was great, but it was time to move and Victoria is a perfect place to raise a family cause it’s just a little more affordable and it’s still by the ocean and there’s still enough going on that you can’t really get bored.
You’ve got kids? Yeah, two kids, 9 and 12.
Two kids. Yeah. Two boys.
I see. Are they into making art? Yeah, they go through phases. They’ve made comic books on their own, but they sort of go in and out of it. They’re not like doing it everyday. My youngest likes to make things. Not just draw, but like build things and contraptions and stuff, so they’re always creating something. My eldest is getting more into music, so that’s pretty exciting too.
You said you were in Vancouver for 10 years, so I’m assuming that while you were in Vancouver that’s when you were a graphic designer. Yeah, part of it. I was doing freelance there.
When was the turning point from being a full on graphic designer and when you decided to I don’t know, leave graphic design or get out of graphic design and pursue this? Was there a particular moment? No. I wish I could say there was some magical moment that was like Hollywood worthy, where everything changed, but there wasn’t. I think I was working freelance and then we moved to Victoria and I got a full-time job at a software company and I was the in-house graphic designer. There was something liberating about that I think because I didn’t have to find clients. I didn’t have to invoice them and have meetings with them. I just show up, work–worked hard, but still that was a chunk of my head that didn’t have to think about that stuff. I think that made a little bit of space in my brain… clear a little space for me to get drawing more on a regular basis.
At the time, we had young children and we were sleep deprived cause we’re up all the time and so… it was really hard and one of the things I would do, when I would get our eldest to sleep because at the time he was like about three or something, I’d sit in his room and wait for him to fall asleep cause he didn’t like to be alone. I’d sit in there and have like a little book read and I would have one of my notebooks. I would just sort of draw away and I’d be tired, but it was really quiet and I just had to sit quietly and just wait and I ended up doing so much drawing that way cause it was every single night for about half an hour or so that I was just sitting quiet and it was actually a really perfect time to just sort of let ideas come out. I generated a lot of the ideas and a lot of sort of what ended up being the foundation of the body of work that I have now really came out of those nigh time sessions of doodling.
Yeah and you mentioned, though, earlier that as a kid, you drew a lot. Right? Yeah. I did.
Was there a moment that you could remember, when you thought, “Man, this is what I used to do as a kid all the time. I should continue doing it. I should try to do something with this”? Yeah, that’s a good question cause I think I always drew, but then I went to school, to university. I got a Fine Arts degree, but there I did more painting and photography and then it wasn’t until later, when one of the things that inspired me was when I saw the work by The Royal Art Lodge and Marcel Dzama and a number of other artists, who were from Canada and they were making a big splash on the international art scene and their work was drawing and it had humor in it and there’s a few other contemporary artists at the time that were coming out and drawing was sort of coming back into its own. It was being taken seriously as an art form.
Seeing that gave me permission to sort of jump back into it, like, “Okay, well this is really interesting what they’re doing.” It’s just so much more than just illustration. It’s more than just comic books cause I wasn’t interested in comic books anymore and so that was kind of like one of those things that got me back into it and got me exploring and excited about doing it again.
It’s funny, where I find your work, nowadays. It’s everywhere. Yeah, like where?
For instance, I follow a lot of web designers as well as other artists, painters, illustrators and then designers, right? Generally speaking, designers. Lately, I’ve been seeing that a lot of web designers have gotten into your stuff or have been mentioning your work all over the place and I thought, “Wow, this is really neat. This is really cool.” And then you’re friends with a mutual buddy, Paul Jarvis. Yes.
He’s also a designer and he does all kinds of stuff, man. He writes and he designs and now he has classes and courses. Yeah, he’s awesome.
He knows a lot of folks that are sort of in a different world. Yeah.
That’s another way that your work is getting exposed and that’s a great, great, thing. It is. It’s great and you know I recognized some of those famous web designers cause I followed their work back, when I was doing more design work and stuff. A few of them have actually bought my work, like I’ll get an order, get a notification from Shopify and I’ll say, “Oh my gosh, isn’t that so and so?” And then I’ll do a quick Google or I can tell by the email address they’ve left that it’s their domain. I think, “Holy crap! So and so bought my work.” And so I’ll make a little note on it, when I send it off to them saying, “Hey, thanks,” just to acknowledge that, “I know who you are too,” you know? That’s always really cool.
Yeah. Have you worked with any of them or anyone that you’ve recognized and you thought, “Wow, this is great” and then one thing led to another and you just mentioned the term commissions, any commissions from these folks? Well, one of the bigger ones was way back I was following Swissmiss. You know that blog?
Oh yeah. Tina discovered my work and then she blogged about it and that was when I was in the first year I was sharing my work and then that really opened that my audience wide. She kept showing my work on her blog periodically. I had a new book out and then she showed that and then we she started Tattly, the temporary tattoo company she has, she approached me and asked if I would be one amongst the first set of artists that she approached to be a part of that. That was really cool that that sort of turned into that and she’s amazing. She’s done so many phenomenal projects.
Oh, yeah. I don’t know if she has time to sleep, but it’s been a privilege to be a part of that.
Yeah, absolutely. She’s raising a family and then she has multiple projects that are happening at the same time. She’s running a co-working space. She… on and on but yeah, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that she had blogged about it. Like I said, your stuff comes up all over the place. Maybe the least expected places online, but that’s good though. Those are the best places.
Yeah. Exactly. You just mentioned a book. Yes.
Was that I Made These Drawings For You? Was that the book you’re referring to? No. Actually it was my first book called Serious Drawings.
Oh, Serious Drawings. What was interesting is she [Tina Roth Eisenberg] blogged about that book and then in the comments of her blog post was the editor from that publisher and she said to Tina, “Tina, I discovered Marc’s work on your blog.” She discovered my work on Tina’s blog, got in touch with me and then offered me the chance to do a book. The Internet is amazing! (laughing)
That’s amazing! Let’s go to your blog for now. I’m looking at it right now. Do you credit your blog to a lot of what you’ve accomplished with your illustrations? Were you posting regularly on your blog? Were you showing your work in other places? Of course, there’s this growing social media thing presence that we’re all a part of.
Yeah.
Was there something in particular, where you showcased work back, when you started? Yeah. When I really started posting my work on a regular basis is–I can pinpoint it–it was like the fall of 2006. I was putting it on Flickr and doing okay. Nobody really gave a damn about it and then there was a new social network called Vox.com. It’s long gone now, but it was started by the same company that started TypePad and so I jumped on that. I gave it a shot… I was like a Beta user or whatever and then on like their launch day, when it came out of Beta, I was one of the featured posts on the front page of their fledgling social network.
Very cool. I got a whole bunch of traction from there and then that became sort of like my main spot to post stuff. From there things translated well on Flickr, but eventually I wasn’t happy with the amount of control I had in there. I was trying to have my own site once and for all, so it wasn’t till 2009 that I actually had my own blog, so it was about three years of just posting willy-nilly in various places. Eventually, Vox closed up, so thank God.
Why? Well, thank God that I wasn’t relying on that. That’s why I always tell aspiring illustrators, who think that they can just post everything on Instagram and that’ll be it.
“Don’t build your house on somebody else’s foundation. You need a home base.”As I say, don’t build your house on somebody else’s foundation. You need a home base. You can engage with lots of people in lots of different places, but you still need a home base that you can like send people to or that ideally comes up first, when people are looking you up, a place, where you get to control what people see right off the bat.
I think if you look back at what I did, it was sort of really haphazard, “Oh, this is shiny and new. I’m gonna try this and post that and ooh, nobody gives a damn about my work here.” I”ll play around here. “Oh this is really fun. I like the interaction I get here,” and then people really respond to my work, so that’s great, so I keep going with that. It’s sort of a progression.
Now I think it’s interesting, I find myself reading blogs less and less. The traffic to my own blog is kind of stagnating, sort of going slow and I kind of wonder if that it happened after Google got rid of Reader and some other things and just the way that we consume things. It’s always changing you know, but then on the flip-side I set up a Facebook page begrudgingly, but that has like taken off and I have a ton of people following me on there, so what do I know?
The whole landscape is changing dramatically. I listen to a lot of stuff or read things, so I don’t know, which it was, but I’ve learned that it’s a definite thing that a lot of website traffic is sort of dwindling as a whole. Really? Yeah.
That’s pretty interesting. It is.
Excluding social media sites of course. Those seem to keep on booming.
You started blogging in 2009. Was that the point, when you decided you were gonna take this seriously? I think I was always taking it seriously, but obviously the seriousness gradually increased and then it became really serious. It think I always took it fairly serious, but it was nice having a full-time job, so that I could just keep working it. The art didn’t have to make money and I think that’s critical in the beginning. I would get approached to do things like T-shirts and stuff and then I turned them down cause I didn’t want the art to be about making T-shirts. I wanted the art to be about making art. I was kind of probably snobby about it and being a bit of a purist, but I really think it…
Well, rightfully so. I think my heart was in the right place, I hope. I was trying to find my voice and build a small, but growing body of work and trying to figure out, where I wanted to take this. I don’t want it to suddenly go straight… cause I soon as you start making things like T-shirts, then the art has to work as a T-shirt and I just wanted to make work that made sense to me or that amused me first and foremost. If it worked on a coffee mug, then great. That was always gonna be a by-product and so it was really about sort of keeping that output consistent and building and trying different things, drawing on post-it notes as well as doing the watercolors, the more detailed work and so on.
You were looking at the big picture and I think that’s where and this is just my opinion, people could take it or leave it, I think that it’s always best to look at the bigger picture and not get so caught up in the immediate shiny thing that you see in front of you.
You had somewhat of a vision and you were still trying to cultivate it, but you saw that there was potential for something much bigger. Yeah. It wasn’t that I was against making things, but I think I just really wanted to just keep it simple and it was also a reaction at the time to all the work I did as a graphic designer. I was already making products basically in my day job, so I didn’t need the satisfaction of seeing my work as a product in my side project, right?
Yeah. I just wanted to amuse myself and others with my drawings, so that sort of kept it simple. It wasn’t really until I got my sixth email from somebody saying, “Hey, I want your art on a iPhone case.” And I thought, “Really? Why would anybody want my art on an iPhone case?” But after six emails, you just start to think, “Well, I guess I should pay attention to this.”
These are six emails only for that particular item? Just an iPhone case, not a T-shirt, not a print, but iPhone case. I would get people ask me for prints, but I had been offering prints already for a number of years. That was when I finally set up a shop on Society6. Looked around. They were sort of like the nicest looking one and I set that up primarily, so that I could say, “Sure, I got iPhone cases. Go here.” And then it did really well, so I was really, really happy with that, but I certainly, sometimes you have to listen to what people ask for because you just have no idea. I didn’t own a smart phone. I still don’t, so I didn’t even know. I’m a lousy example of that customer cause I wouldn’t know what you need.
That’s really cool to know. You don’t own a smart phone. No, I don’t. I’m probably one of the last holdouts. I just don’t think I have the need for it. I don’t have…
It’s a major distraction, major distraction. I’m distracted enough already. I’m distracted on the computer, so when I step away from the computer, I’d rather not bring one with me in my pocket. We’ll see. I don’t think I’ll be able to last much longer, but in the meantime, I’m saving what? eighty bucks a month or something, so there’s that too.
You just came out with a new book, which is really, it’s a really neat idea. It’s called The Daily Artist. It’s not only something you could sort of open up and read if you want. You allow the person that has the book to also draw in it. It’s a little mix of stuff. Can you tell us a little more about the book? Sure. They’re sort of like creative prompts and it’s a journal. The idea is that you draw in pretty much every page. There’s ideas of what to draw and different ways to draw, so on some pages, there’s a grid and it’ll say, “Color in the squares to make a face.” You’ve got to basically make sort o f pixel art.
Then there are other drawings, where there’s random dots, so they’re not in a perfect grid or anything like that and you’ve got to connect them to make a bicycle or a horse or something like that and guaranteed, you’re gonna make a really wonky looking bicycle, when you’re done with it, so don’t worry. That’s part of the fun. It’s just to kind of get you putting pencil or pen on a piece of paper and moving it around and making shapes, making drawings and just kind of getting that out there.
When I first got my copies sent to me from the publisher, my kids jumped into it right away and started drawing and I thought, “Geez, I think I may have inadvertently made a kid’s art journal.” Which whatever, that’s fine. That’s great. They loved filling in half the pages right off the bat with their kooky interpretations of my creative prompts, so that was great. I should share those. I should put those online.
Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome.
Again, it’s called The Daily Artist and everyone you’ve got to get your copy. I’m waiting for mine. As soon as I get mine, I’m gonna show what I drew in my copy. (laughing) Good. I wanna see it.
I’ll post it. You’ve done a bunch of books, so this is your latest one. The two that we just mentioned. The one that you mentioned and again, what’s the title of your first book? My first book is called Serious Drawings. The second one, I Made These Drawings For You or I Made This Book For You.
Yes. That one I self-published and then this third one, The Daily Artist is published by Peter Pauper Pressand they approached me with the idea. I had previously worked with them, licensed one of my images for a bunch of journals and that went quite well. I think it went really well actually, so then they got in touch with me again and said, “You know, we’re doing these series of journals.” They had a song writing journal and a writing journal and they wanted to have an art journal and asked me if I’d b put for the challenge. It was a challenge. It was hard coming up with 160 pages, but it was fun too cause I really had to push to think how can I engage people and it was hard to also imagine what level are people gonna come into this, so you sort of have to go in with a target in mind and just kind of run with it. I hope people like it.
Absolutely. My kids like it, so get it and if you don’t like it, then give it to a kid cause they’ll have a blast with it. I’m sure.
“It’s a great feeling to sell something that you made. It’s a completely different feeling than it is from satisfying a client.”I know I’m gonna have a blast with it. I’m gonna ask this question. I always have a variation of it. What would you tell anyone who’s in that, I don’t know, transitional period or if they want to do something different. Maybe they’re interested in illustration or fine art? I think what I would say is share your side projects. If you’ve got kind of a burning desire to do something else, just give it a shot, but share it with either your current audience or start a fresh blog or a Tumblr somewhere and put it out there.
You mentioned my friend Paul Jarvis. He’s done a great job of being a web designer, but then writing about what he does and I think he’s doing a brilliant job of that. Now half of his living is made from the writing side of things, so, yeah, I would say just jump into it and try things. If you’re like a designer or an illustrator and you’re always doing client work, do that personal work and make prints or something and put it out. Make it available. Share it. Open up an Etsy shop or give Society6 a try.
It’s a great feeling to sell something that you made. It’s a completely different feeling than it is from satisfying a client. When you sort of dreamed up, maybe you have a passion for trees, let’s say and so you do a series of drawings of trees and you identify them or whatever. The trees are having a conversation or something. I don’t know. It has nothing to do with what your clients have ever asked you and your clients, no matter how much you try and give in some will never ask you or pay you to do this, so you just go and to it. Sometimes, that passion comes through in that personal project and it resonates with people and the feeling you get from having that resonate with people and maybe even buying, whether as a print or something like that is so great because now it’s just you and something you dreamed up and a person out there, they liked it and bought it and it’s a completely different transaction–not to be crass about it–but a completely different transaction than doing client work.
It’s really gratifying and not a bad thing from a practical point of view to diversify your income that way. You have the client work or your regular job, but you have sort of ongoing side projects that maybe can bring in a little bit of money and those things can grow into other things.
Illustration students email me for advice and I always tell them, you know, “Put personal work in your portfolio and put the kind of work that you want to do in your portfolio.” You may have done work for say your local grocery store and you hate it, so you don’t have to put it in there cause if you put something you don’t like in your portfolio, you’re gonna get hired to make more of that.
Sometimes the side projects that you post, whether it’s my example of the trees, you put that out there, somebody will see that and they’ll say, “Oh, I love that,” and they’ll ask you to do something similar to that for my company or my business. Then all of a sudden now, you suddenly branched out. Haha, no pun intended (chuckles)
…but you suddenly… woah, I didn’t see that one coming. Suddenly you’ve just given yourself a new direction, so that’s always fantastic, but it doesn’t have to be that too, it could be like what you mentioned earlier. Writing. I think anybody, who’s been doing something like design, freelance, web development for a length of time, you have these valuable skills and there’s always people, who are about two or three years behind you, who would kill to know how you do what you do and so there’s an opportunity there to teach, to share some of that knowledge, tips and tricks.
You could take it a few steps further and offer a course or something like that, so there’s all kinds of great opportunities there. Yeah and you might look around and say, “Oh well, everybody else is doing it.” You have your own voice, so it’s still valid. You have your own approach. Your own unique way of doing things and that might resonate better with some people than what’s already out there.
Thank you!
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Interview by Cesar Contreras
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