How to Launch a Career in Freelance Design - with Jessica Hische

Jessica, thanks so much for being here with us. We really appreciate you coming out. 0:00 [treehouse friends] [Jessica Hische - Letterer, type designer, illustrator, web designer] 0:04 For people who don't know who you are, how would you describe yourself? Who are you? 0:06 I am a letterer, illustrator, graphic designer-- 0:10 which I don't do that much graphic design anymore, 0:15 but that's the term that most people understand, 0:16 so on forms I always write graphic designer-- 0:19 and secret web designer. 0:21 The reason why I say secret web designer is because I don't do anything for clients 0:23 and I don't tell anyone actively that I have the skills to be able to do HTML and CSS, 0:27 but I have them just because they help me do my own side project stuff. 0:32 Lettering is like a very weird mix of graphic design and illustration. 0:37 It's like illustrations of words. 0:43 So it's far more on the illustration side than it is the graphic design side, 0:46 even though designers kind of want to have it as theirs 0:49 because they think of typography is being in their realm. 0:52 But yeah, so I work for a big variety of clients. 0:56 I do a lot of stuff for book covers, I do a lot of stuff for advertising, 0:58 and then the most notable recent stuff that I've probably done 1:03 is the titles for Wes Anderson's most recent movie, 1:05 and I also am a part of a big series of classic books that Penguin is releasing now 1:08 called Penguin Drop Caps, which will be 26 books all featuring my art. 1:14 I just saw those. I saw Dracula and-- 1:18 Oh. No, those were the ones for Barnes & Noble. 1:21 So there's a new set. >>Oh, okay. >>So you did those. >>Yeah. 1:23 I did a series for Barnes & Noble that were really fun, 1:26 and they were the full titles and very illustrative and lettering all over them. 1:29 They were leather bound with 2-color foil. 1:34 But these are through Penguin, and so Paul Buckley when he saw my drop caps 1:37 that I made for my Daily Drop Cap project, which started in 2009, 1:43 he was like, "We've got to figure out a way how to do something with these." 1:48 And it took him a year or year and a half to get them to really get on board with the idea of it. 1:51 So now I'm doing a new series of classic re-releases, 1:57 and they're all based on the author's last name, 2:01 and we're going through the full alphabet. 2:04 So it starts with Austen, Bronte, and every book, the main cover art is a giant letter 2:05 that's on the front that I draw based on the story. 2:13 That's amazing. Everyone kind of knows what it means to be a graphic designer. 2:16 And you answered this a little bit already, but what does it mean to be a letterer? 2:20 Is that strictly fonts, or is that hand drawing fonts, or what does that mean? 2:24 I love when this topic gets brought up just because a lot of people 2:29 don't understand the difference between fonts and lettering and calligraphy. 2:33 They're all very different fields. 2:38 They're very different to me as a nerd because all the nerds are very, 2:41 "Oh, my God! Can you believe how crazy different it is?" 2:45 But to common people, it's all the same umbrella. 2:48 Type design and making fonts is a lot more involved in terms of making systems 2:51 than the kind of work that I do for clients, which is lettering work. 2:59 So if you think about it, if I'm going to put it in web terms or anything too, 3:03 being a letterer is more like being a designer for the main focus of the site, 3:08 and being a type designer is the person that has to develop the full back end system 3:17 for everything to work in. 3:22 So type designers, of course there's a lot of artistry that goes into what they do, 3:24 and they are crafting all the letter forms from scratch. 3:28 But unlike what I do as a letterer, all of the letter forms have to work together 3:31 in endless combinations and being put together by people that do not know what they're doing 3:36 in design software. 3:40 So you have to idiot proof it 1000%; you have to technology proof it like crazy. 3:43 There are typefaces that were digitized 15 years ago that still work on your computer now, 3:47 and not many people understand that's why typefaces cost what they do, 3:53 because when was the last time you bought software that lasted for 15 years? 3:57 You really have to future proof it, and it's very, very involved. 4:01 And lettering is very different because it's more like if type designers are like architects 4:05 or engineers, then letterers are like people that make beautiful handcrafted boxes or something. 4:10 It's not meant to be reproduced. 4:17 It's not actually meant to be perfect, it's just meant to be very human 4:19 and be made for a very specific situation. 4:23 So if I'm doing lettering for a book cover, 4:27 that lettering is never meant to be used anywhere else. 4:29 I'm drawing it specifically for that instance. 4:32 So when people write me and say, "Hey, do you have the T to that alphabet?" 4:34 I'm like, "Nope. I only drew that 1 word." [laughs] 4:37 A lot of people don't understand the reason why you would do lettering 4:41 when there are so many typefaces out there. 4:44 The main thing, and this is shocking, but sometimes you can't find a typeface 4:47 that will really work for what you need. 4:51 For instance, with the titles that I did for Moonrise Kingdom, 4:54 they really wanted to use a script, but there's very few typefaces 4:57 that come in optical weights. 5:00 Optical weights are different than normal weight of a typeface, 5:03 like a bold and regular and light, 5:07 which are meant to be a very different version of the typeface. 5:09 Optical weights are meant so that you can scale the typeface to a different size 5:14 and it looks like it's the same weight to the tiny size. 5:17 So you have to make all these little, subtle changes between them 5:21 in order to make them look like they're the same weight. 5:23 There are a lot of really great instances where letters come into play, 5:25 and one of them is for book covers and stuff like that. 5:29 So if you had a book cover and you had a 4-letter title, a 15-word subtitle, 5:31 and the author's name and you wanted them all to be set in the same typeface, 5:36 it's going to be really hard for you to find a typeface that isn't a workhorse textface 5:41 where you can use it at all those sizes that you need. 5:44 So that's where a letterer would come into play. 5:47 We could draw everything from scratch exactly as you want it 5:50 so you end up with ultimately precisely what you would want 5:52 versus almost what you want. >>That's amazing. You're educating me here. 5:55 Let's back up and start from the beginning. Where did you grow up? 6:00 I grew up in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, which is in northeast PA. 6:05 We are a wonderful part of the nation, full of scandal, also home to Joe Biden, 6:09 though he is from 2 towns better than my town in terms of malls. 6:16 We had to drive 40 miles as teenagers to go to the mall in Scranton 6:21 instead of going to ours. 6:25 It's funny because there's a good amount of designers that have come out of that area, 6:28 and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it is a small town. 6:34 So the people that got really artistic got to bond together, 6:41 and we did have a pretty good art program in our high school, all things considered. 6:45 Thanks to the public school, which I transferred into to take more art classes, 6:49 I was able to sort of leave town and make it into real art school. 6:54 Where did you go to school? 6:58 I went to school at Tyler School of Art, which is part of Temple University. 7:00 Temple has all the separate schools just like how Wharton is at Penn. 7:03 I got a BFA from that program. There's a BA and a BFA, so I was a BFA student. 7:10 Okay. When did you first realize that you wanted to be a designer? 7:16 Was it long before that, or did you just kind of have to pick something going into college? 7:22 I lucked into a school that had an excellent design program, 7:27 but I had no intention of being a designer when I applied to art school. >>Really? >>Yeah. 7:33 What did you want to do? >>I just knew I wanted to make art 7:37 in some way, shape, or form. 7:39 It was the only thing that I loved to do and was passionate about. 7:41 I also loved to write when I was in high school, 7:46 but I didn't really feel like I wanted to be a novelist 7:47 and I didn't feel like I wanted to be a journalist. 7:51 Art was something that ever since I could walk I was drawing. 7:54 It was just my whole life. 7:59 I went to school to be kind of like a painting/drawing major 8:02 because I didn't know what graphic design was at all, 8:06 and it wasn't until I got to school that I was able to take a design class 8:08 and really have the light bulb go off of, 8:12 "Wow, this is actually what I should be doing for a living," 8:15 and not because it's the practical thing 8:18 but because it's the thing that I most easily acclimated to. 8:20 I didn't feel like at 19 I wanted to make paintings about my feelings. 8:24 I was very happy to be able to express on behalf of others 8:28 instead of having to be very self-expressionistic. 8:32 So design was really awesome for that because I got to solve problems. 8:36 I got a brief that I had to attack like a crossword puzzle 8:40 and figure out how to visually solve it. 8:43 It was really eye-opening. 8:46 What you went to school for was very directly related to what you do now, 8:47 which isn't always the case. >>Yeah. 8:51 But what's really amazing is that I went to school to draw 8:54 and be an image maker essentially, and then I found my way into graphic design. 8:57 Most graphic designers aren't image makers. They're more curators. 9:01 They're taking this content and manipulating things around the content 9:05 to make it really sing. 9:10 They find the right images, they find the right typefaces, 9:12 and then they put it all together in a really awesome layout. 9:15 But they're not often the creators of the images or the creators of the photographs 9:19 or the creators of the typefaces. 9:23 So I went through the graphic design program and sort of found my way into lettering 9:26 a couple years later, which gets me far closer to my original goal, 9:30 which was to make images for a living. 9:35 Do you feel like the transition from college to career was a natural one, 9:37 or were you unemployed for a while? Did you have an internship? What's your story there? 9:43 It was pretty smooth for me, and I think that's just because when I was in college 9:49 I did intern a lot. 9:52 I interned first at a publisher, Quirk Books. They're in Philadelphia. 9:54 They do funny, gifty books. 9:59 Probably the most recent thing that they've done that is widespread 10:03 is the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies stuff. 10:07 They're the ones that originally put out those books, at least I believe so. 10:10 And then I had discovered--well, I knew of the work but also fell in the love with the work 10:14 of these dudes at Headcase Design, who were also in Philly and also taught at my school 10:19 while I was interning at Quirk because they published the books that they had put out, 10:23 which are very illustrative and really funny, 10:27 and they're doing a lot of authoring of the content. 10:30 And so I ended up interning for Headcase Design after having 1 of them as a professor, 10:33 and I was their first intern. 10:37 It was just 2 dudes, and then I was their first intern. 10:39 I freelanced for them after I graduated because they were just too busy. 10:42 They were like, "We have all these books we've got to work on." 10:46 "Are you around? Can you help out?" 10:49 And I ended up being a full-time freelancer for them for 6 months and loved it. 10:51 And then they cut my hours because they weren't sure 10:57 if they wanted to hire a third employee 10:59 because that was obviously a big step for the business to do that. 11:01 So when they cut my hours, I tried to push myself out there as an illustrator more 11:04 and sent out promos, and that's when I got hired by Louise Fili in New York 11:08 and just had to completely uproot and change my plans and move to New York in 3 weeks. 11:13 Was it a big decision for you to strike out on your own? 11:19 Was that kind of nerve-racking for you? >>It was a big decision. 11:23 It was something that I knew that I wanted to do. 11:28 I had everything in line to make it not nerve-racking. 11:32 I think 1 thing that's really important that not a lot of people consider 11:36 when they are thinking about going full-time freelance 11:39 is to have enough money in the bank. 11:41 I thankfully did because I was freelancing like crazy while I worked for Louise. 11:44 I would work for her from 9:00 to 6:00 and then go home 11:49 and work from 7:00 until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning every day 11:53 and then work at least 1 day on the weekends, and this went on for almost 3 years. 11:56 I was working nonstop, I had plenty of money saved, 12:00 but a big thing that a lot of people do when they want to go freelance 12:05 is they branch out thinking that whatever they're doing now will pay the bills. 12:07 But whatever you're doing pays the bills 6 months from now, 12:12 it doesn't pay the bills now. 12:14 So having that reserve made it less nerve-racking, but it was still really scary 12:16 to go from complete order to no order whatsoever. 12:20 Was there 1 particular project that you feel like really launched your career? 12:25 Definitely. >>Yeah? >>Yeah, yeah. 12:30 I felt like my career was going really well. 12:32 I was doing more editorial illustration--hardly any lettering at the time. 12:35 I was doing a lot of lettering for Louise during my day job 12:40 but not doing quite as much lettering for freelance stuff. 12:43 But when I quit working for Louise, I started my Daily Drop Cap project, 12:47 which was a project that I made so that I could do lettering every day 12:52 after I left working for Louise. 12:55 I gave myself a goal that I was going to draw a letter a day every workday 12:57 until I made it through 12 alphabets. 13:02 I would just go alphabetically through 12 times until I made it all the way through. 13:05 And it was just a way for me to be able to give myself a longer term project 13:10 that wasn't as intimidating because I was doing it in these little chunks 13:14 but that also allowed me to do lettering every day and really get more lettering work 13:17 into my portfolio. 13:21 So it was because of that project that my career just completely went crazy, 13:23 because I had been getting consistent work. 13:27 I was going to all the illustration events, and I had this posse of illustration friends 13:30 in New York that were all really awesome and very motivating 13:35 because they all had great careers and really pushed me to go further. 13:39 But when I launched Daily Drop Cap and when it started really getting into the design blogs 13:44 and making the rounds, that's when people started to recognize my name more 13:48 and I was less of another illustrator that does cut papery kind of vector illustration 13:53 and people really saw me 13:58 for the stuff that I really wanted to do, which was the lettering work. 14:00 And I started to get more and more lettering work because of that project. 14:03 That's really fascinating because I'm actually doing the same thing myself right now 14:07 but with numbers. >>Oh yeah? 14:11 Sometimes I just get an itch to design stuff. 14:14 I was like, "You know what? If I just go with numbers, I'll never run out of them." >>Nice. 14:16 But in a way, you'll never run out of them. [laughs] >>That's very cool. 14:22 What's your process for developing a lettering project 14:29 from a design perspective but also a technical perspective? >>Sure, sure. 14:34 Depending on the kind of client that I'm working for, the process changes a little bit. 14:39 Ultimately, most of my lettering work takes place in Adobe Illustrator. 14:45 That's my prime time program. 14:48 I draw everything with the Pen tool. 14:51 I don't use a lot of crazy, fancy tricks and stuff 14:54 because if you can master the Pen tool in Illustrator, 14:57 you've essentially mastered Illustrator. 14:59 That is the base. It's like the bread and butter of that program. 15:01 I mostly use a mouse. 15:06 I have a Cintiq that I bought that I thought I was going to be completely in love with, 15:09 and I do love it, but I love it for doing sketches and not for working in vector as much 15:13 just because I am so much faster with the mouse 15:18 because of all the practice that I've had with it. 15:21 But in general, when I work for clients I'll get the brief from the client, 15:24 we'll figure out how many sketches that they need up front 15:28 and what level of sketches that they need-- 15:31 in general, something like a logo, which the end client would be 15:33 just kind of a normal person and less someone in the designer field. 15:36 Things would need to look a little more finished up front, 15:40 whereas if it was something for advertising, I can work a lot more with the team 15:43 at the ad agency and present pencil sketches first 15:47 and then get them to approve 1 of the pencil sketches, 15:50 and then we do a rough and then maybe at that stage they can show the client. 15:53 I generally start with pencils or with drawings on my Cintiq that I just do in Photoshop 15:57 and then send that off, do 3 or 4, get approval for 1, and then jump into Illustrator. 16:03 I don't often trace my sketches because I think that there's a lot that happens 16:09 in the translation between sketch and final if I don't trace them, 16:15 whereas if I do trace them I'm a little too loyal to the sketch 16:19 and maybe the sketch wasn't as perfect as I'd like it to be. >>That's interesting. 16:22 For me it's kind of like if I don't trace the sketch it's like I get to draw from life. 16:26 It's like going to a figure drawing class because your mind reinterprets what you want, 16:30 it idealizes things, and you can really let the tools that you're working with help you 16:34 instead of having to be very mechanical when you're doing your pencil drawing. 16:40 And so I work in Illustrator and in general, if people need the layered files 16:43 or they need the AI files, I can give them to them. 16:48 But a lot of times they can be really complex depending on what kind of work it is. 16:50 Of it's illustrative lettering work, sometimes it gets so crazy 16:54 that it won't preview anymore in Illustrator. 16:57 So I have to export everything as TIFs and send them the flattened artwork. 17:00 You wouldn't think that something that's math-based in vector would get so crazy, 17:04 but once you start adding all kinds of blurs and stuff, it gets a little bonkers. 17:09 As a designer, I feel like I only have an intuition when picking fonts. 17:14 I'll approach the project and I'll need to have letters someplace, 17:19 and I'll just kind of scroll through and look through different fonts. 17:25 How do you figure out how to take a message from a client 17:30 and then turn that into letters? 17:35 Well, if you're talking about picking typefaces, that's a totally different process 17:39 than doing the lettering stuff. >>Which I understand now. >>Yeah. 17:44 And picking typefaces, I think trusting your intuition isn't a terrible way to go. 17:47 But a big thing that you have to consider when you're choosing typefaces too 17:52 is what is the use of this typeface? 17:55 For me, a big part of choosing typefaces is figuring out what content is the most important 17:58 or the most prevalent throughout what the client needs. 18:04 If it's a poster, it's very different than an annual report. 18:07 For an annual report you definitely want to pick your text type first 18:14 because it's going to be the most prevalent thing there, 18:17 whereas if it's a crazy poster or something that's going to be single use, 18:20 big display, fine, pick your display first and then pick a text type that matches 18:24 and still goes with everything. 18:28 But you really have to think about what needs that you have of the typeface. 18:30 If you're working for a client that's international, 18:35 they might need a typeface that has a non-Latin component to it, 18:38 like maybe you need the Greek version of the typeface 18:44 or you need to find something that has an Arabic that matches it well. 18:47 That's a whole other ballpark of typeface choosing. 18:51 But really, you can get pretty nerdy about it. 18:56 It kind of depends on what your priorities are. 18:58 You can totally trust your intuition because typefaces do have personality, 19:02 they have feeling. 19:06 You look at something and you can tell if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy 19:07 or if it makes you feel like austere and being very charming or something. >>Elegant? 19:09 Yeah, exactly. 19:18 You can completely trust that, but if you feel like going the next level, 19:20 you can investigate the history of typefaces. 19:24 Say you're working on something that's meant to be alluding to the 1930s or something. 19:26 You can choose a typeface that was designed by someone that had designed it around then 19:32 and was maybe redrawn recently by some crazy person. 19:37 Clients love to hear stuff like that where you can give them these kind of facts 19:42 to re-say to their friends at parties because we all-- >>And tell them the story. Yeah. 19:46 We love to tell stories and we love to be nerds 19:50 and we love to have these secret facts about the things that we've made 19:52 that no one else knows about but it's like a secret Easter egg for us 19:56 and for people that would care to know. 19:59 I think that you can get really fun when you choose typefaces, 20:02 but I think that it's not wrong to choose based on intuition for sure. >>That's really cool. 20:05 One thing that really impresses me about your work is just your work ethic. 20:10 I feel like you just kind of never stop working. 20:15 Yeah. [laughs] >>Would you say that's the case? 20:18 It's like both a problem and great. [laughs] 20:20 I make jokes all the time about how I'm a terrible relaxer. 20:25 I just got married recently, and going on my honeymoon was like, 20:28 "Okay, let's figure out how we're actually going to relax," 20:32 because when you really like to work so much, 20:35 it's really hard to stop yourself because you're like, "I have an idea. Let's do this thing." 20:39 I think Russ and I are the same where we would so much rather take a night 20:43 to devote to something that we're really, really like, "Oh, my God, 20:48 "I suddenly had this crazy idea and it has to happen now," 20:51 versus taking the time off to have a chill night in or something, 20:55 which I do plenty of as well. 20:59 But yeah, it can be tough to stop. It's addictive. 21:02 I think part of it is when you have ideas-- 21:06 I feel like I have a lot of harebrained ideas. 21:10 But my harebrained ideas aren't so harebrained that they shouldn't be real. 21:13 And I think that's the distinction that allows me to work a lot more 21:17 and to create a lot more is that a lot of the ideas that I have 21:21 tend to be on a smaller scale and are very helpful to a certain amount of people. 21:25 So I really want to make them because I know that they'll be amazing 21:30 and will help someone when they're made, 21:33 and I know that they'll take me a long weekend if I really just dive in. 21:36 So I think that that's the main reason why I can be so productive and work all the time 21:40 is because I don't give myself, "Write an 800-page novel" assignments. 21:45 I give myself, "Spend 8 hours doing this 1 thing" assignments. 21:51 And I think if you give yourself more realistic goals, you can be a lot more productive. 21:55 And then after you feel like you can accomplish a lot, 21:59 then you can give yourself bigger goals. 22:02 Or if you're the kind of person that needs to work on giant projects, 22:04 then those are the kind of projects you should give yourself. 22:07 I feel like you do so many side projects. 22:10 Do you feel like it's just a big mix of side projects, 22:13 or are there things that take your primary focus? 22:16 A lot of the side projects that I've done have been one-offs, 22:20 which I kind of like those better because they don't require constant maintenance 22:23 and constantly having to make new things for them 22:28 because I do have a really short attention span when it comes to creation. 22:30 I'll have an idea and I want it to be real, 22:33 and then it's real and then I'm happy and then I move on. 22:36 But I have a couple projects that are longer term projects, 22:38 like Don't Fear the Internet, the video series that I made, 22:40 and I love that project so much just because I've gotten such amazing feedback from it 22:43 and they're really enjoyable to make, and I feel like I learn a lot through making the videos too. 22:48 I love putting them out there, but each video takes 30 hours to make 22:54 just because we write the full scripts in advance and then we read through the scripts, 23:00 then we have to come up with images for it. 23:05 And if you're coming up with images and slides for 15 minutes of a video, 23:06 it's a lot to cut in. 23:12 So we end up spending so much time on these videos that we release for free online. 23:14 And we have a little Donate button, but we definitely have not even gotten enough 23:20 to cover half of what the hosting costs. [laughs] 23:24 So it's definitely a labor of love, but it's still really worth doing 23:28 because I feel like I get so much joy out of helping other people 23:33 be able to do what they want to do, 23:37 and making these videos, getting those emails from people saying, 23:40 "Oh, my God, I now can make my own portfolio website, blah, blah, blah," 23:45 I'm just like, "Thank you. Yay! Go do it." 23:48 And then that makes me motivated to go do my work 23:50 because I know that there's other people that are getting motivated by things that I've made. 23:52 That's really cool. 23:55 I think part of being a designer is editorializing your work. 23:57 And with social media there's this big temptation to just kind of post every step 24:02 of everything that you're working on, but you don't do that. 24:08 I've noticed that in your portfolio you just post really complete work. 24:10 Would you say that's the case? 24:17 I definitely don't abridge my portfolio much. 24:20 That's partially because of the illustration background. 24:24 Graphic designers can have a very minimal portfolio. 24:28 As a graphic designer, you want to show your 20 best pieces 24:33 and show them very in depth, like case studies. 24:35 But as an illustrator, you need to show a lot of work, 24:39 especially if you want to work for the advertising field 24:43 just because a lot of times your clients are a little less-- 24:47 they can't look forward quite as much as other clients. 24:52 So if they're hiring you to do something for a Christmas campaign 24:56 and you don't have a Christmas tree in your portfolio, 25:00 you'll get questions like, "Well, we just don't know if she can draw a Christmas tree." 25:03 And it's like, "But I've drawn thousands of other trees! Look, I did this whole arboretum thing." 25:07 "It's so many trees." 25:11 But they need to see it in your portfolio because oftentimes 25:13 the agency needs to be able to sell you to the client. 25:16 You might get contacted by an agency that says, 25:19 "Send us all of your Christmas themed work," 25:22 which is pretty specific, and some people might only have 1 or 2 pieces. 25:25 But if you have it all online, it's really easy for them to grab. 25:29 It's a lot easier for them to sell you through to the client. 25:32 So that's why my portfolio is really, really big 25:34 and also because I really like having students be able to go through 25:38 and see the older work too. 25:42 There's very few pieces that I don't post to my portfolio, 25:45 but there's of course some bread and butter work that didn't make it on. [laughs] 25:48 But yeah, in general, I like to share but I also don't like to-- 25:55 I think that in general, whenever I post new work to my site 25:59 I don't go totally social networky crazy talking about it online 26:02 because for me, I've found that social networking has been a really wonderful way 26:06 for me to just talk to strangers every day 26:12 and far less of a way for me to be like, "Look at me! Look at all these things!" 26:14 I would never want it to steer towards the way of people thinking 26:19 that I was using it as strictly a self-promotional tool. 26:23 It has been of course wonderful in terms of promotion, 26:26 but the thing that I enjoy most about Twitter and about any of those social networks 26:29 is that I get to engage with people on a real level and not be like a fake version of myself. 26:34 And I think that people have responded to that too 26:40 because I get so many emails from people that are having life crises 26:42 and want me to help solve them and stuff like that 26:47 just because I am myself online, I'm not a very filtered person. 26:48 One thing that fascinates me is how different designers decide to price their work. 26:54 As I understand it, you don't price hourly, do you? >>No, no. 27:00 That's just because most of the work that I do is not design. 27:05 Design can make sense to price hourly if you're working with a client 27:09 in a long-term way and especially if you're not the best at pricing a project full out 27:14 or you don't quite know the scope of the project yet. 27:21 But with all the work that I'm doing, I know the exact scope of the project. 27:24 And so it's all priced based on creation of work and then usage of the work. 27:28 That's just how illustration works. 27:33 Lettering is within the illustration realm in terms of pricing for sure. 27:35 When a client comes to me and says, "We have this assignment; 27:39 "what do you price for it?" there's a lot of factors that you take into consideration. 27:44 It's like, who is the client, because you're going to charge very differently for Coca-Cola 27:48 than you are for a cheese shop around the corner from your house. 27:51 And then what kind of usage do they need? 27:56 Do they need it to be domestic or international? 27:58 Do they need web and print? 28:00 Do they need it be web, print, and media, like broadcast television stuff? 28:02 And do they need it 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, indefinitely? 28:07 Do they want exclusive rights to your artwork, 28:10 or are you allowed to resell your artwork to other people after a certain time? 28:13 All that stuff kind of adds up to what the price ends up being. 28:16 What's really nice about pricing that way is instead of just having a flat fee of, 28:19 "This is what it costs," you can break things down in a way that they can be like, 28:24 "Well, if you want it forever, all the artwork on every media, it's going to cost this." 28:27 "But if you just need it for 2 years, 28:34 "which of course it looks like that's what you're only going to need it for, it costs this." 28:36 "And if you only need it for 2 years but you don't need it exclusive, it costs this." 28:40 So you can give them little stepping stones along the way 28:45 and they can figure out what usage that they want. 28:48 So in the end, it allows me to price more fairly to smaller people and individuals 28:51 and to be able to fund all of that kind of work and my side projects, 28:57 which are totally for free and I make no money on essentially, 29:03 by pricing standard to aggressively for the bigger kind of client work. 29:07 As you mentioned, you just had the opportunity to work with Wes Anderson 29:14 on Moonrise Kingdom. >>Indeed. >>Can you talk about that experience? 29:18 It must have been pretty cool. >>Sure, sure. That was a ridiculous experience. 29:22 For one thing, since we're jumping from the pricing thing, 29:26 whenever you work for cool people, it's far less of a bag of gold 29:29 than when you work for dorky things. [laughs] 29:36 It was a great experience, but I definitely did not get paid in gold bricks for that project. 29:39 Working with them was crazy. 29:45 I got an email from one of their co-producers that was just super normal 29:48 first client contact email, "Hey, Jessica. This is Molly." 29:54 "I'm just one of the co-producers on Wes Anderson's new movie." 29:59 "We're starting to think about the titles, and we're wondering if you were around 30:03 "to do some tests for the titles. Thanks." 30:06 Just super normal contact email. 30:09 And I was losing my mind over it. 30:12 I got it in, I took a screen grab of it and sent it to Russ, 30:14 and then he calls me because he's freaking out. 30:18 So of course I was like, "Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes." 30:21 At the time, I wasn't sure if they were working with other people 30:26 because a lot of times as a letterer or illustrator, you're 1 among several people 30:28 that they hire just to try things out and see who's the best 30:33 and to sell through to the end client, 30:36 but I got the real impression that they weren't working with a lot of people 30:38 at the point when they hired me. 30:41 And then Molly, the woman that I worked with, verified it afterwards 30:44 that they weren't, that they had tried to hire someone else 30:47 but that they decided to not use them and then were sort of scrambling for a person 30:50 and then came up with me and were like, "Okay, do it." [laughs] 30:55 But they originally hired me to do a couple samples for them for a few hundred dollars 30:58 just to try out a few styles and see how we worked together and things like that. 31:03 It originally started based on Edwardian Script, which is a pretty formal typeface, 31:09 and that was drawn by Ed Benguiat, who is an amazing legend. 31:14 So it was sort of a tall order to draw something based on this crazy legend's typeface. 31:18 But ultimately, we ended up steering away from that 31:25 and going towards something that was a bit more hand-hewn feeling, 31:27 that was based on some film titles from--I'm not even going to try and pronounce 31:32 the director's name--Chabrol or something like that. I'm terrible with French pronunciations. 31:39 I understand. >>So we based it on some lettering that was in one of his films 31:44 but then of course moved it in the direction of Wes's work. 31:49 And my work is extremely American too, so it's kind of hard to do anything 31:54 that's European feeling. 31:59 And then they originally hired me to do lettering for the front credits 32:02 and a typeface for the end credits, 32:07 but ultimately, I ended up doing a typeface in 2 weights instead 32:10 and then setting the front credits for them, 32:14 and that was because once I had done the lettering they were like, 32:16 "Okay, great. We need to pick a typeface to use on all the posters and stuff 32:20 "because obviously, we can't use the text type that you made for the back on it 32:23 "and we're running out of time, and we can't make another typeface." 32:27 And I was like, "No! I'll do it." [both laugh] 32:33 So essentially, I ended up sort of doubling my work a little bit 32:36 just because I really wanted them to be able to use it on everything that they wanted to, 32:39 and it was so worth it because they used the typeface so extensively 32:44 on all the posters and stuff that I saw around. 32:47 Their original posters that they released was just the type all over the poster. 32:50 It was awesome. 32:56 Working with him was super amazing. 32:58 Originally, when I first started the project, Molly was communicating Wes's direction to me 33:01 through email, but when we really got into the thick of it, 33:06 it was just Wes emailing me doodles and stuff 33:09 and occasionally writing in all caps by accident and stuff like that. 33:13 It was really fun. 33:16 He really knows his stuff and would give direction--very, very specific direction-- 33:18 for the type that most art directors wouldn't be able to give. 33:25 He would make distinctions within the lowercase r that I was making 33:30 and wanted me to try something new and would suggest things. 33:34 I've worked with a lot of art directors that have worked for years with type 33:37 and have hired a lot of type designers and letterers, 33:41 and the decisions that he made were more gut decisions 33:44 because he didn't use proper terms because this isn't his trade, it's not his specialty. 33:48 But they were so correct. 33:55 All the decisions that he was making were correct and were right for the project. 33:57 It was really interesting to work together. 34:01 It ended up being a major collaboration, far more than me going off on my own 34:03 and being Miss Type Expert. >>That's amazing. 34:07 Wrapping up, for designers that are just starting out, 34:12 what piece of advice would you give them? 34:17 What do you feel like is the 1 thing that maybe you did for yourself 34:18 that really put your career in motion? 34:22 I think the biggest advice is to not be intimidated to start. 34:26 A lot of people write their 5-year plan, 34:29 and then that 5-year plan just destroys them because it just seems so big 34:34 and they don't see the steps along the way. 34:39 I think that the biggest thing that a lot of designers suffer from when they're starting out 34:42 is not being able to see the forest through the trees. 34:45 I think the biggest thing would be make small goals for yourself that are attainable, 34:48 things that you love to do, and start there, 34:55 and a lot of times that can really impact what you end up doing 34:58 and what you find that you really love, 35:02 because if you make a decision just based on a job title, 35:05 you might not actually like what you're doing day to day, 35:08 whereas if you make a decision based on the things that you enjoy doing-- 35:11 Some people love tedium and some people hate tedium, 35:15 so not everyone can be a type designer because so much of it is very, very tedious. 35:20 And if you're not that kind of person, being a type designer 35:24 sounds like it could be a fun thing to do, but if you don't like the day to day, 35:27 you would hate your job. 35:30 Same thing with if you wanted to work at a branding agency. 35:32 If you hate long-term brand extension projects because you have a really short attention span 35:35 and you love just being able to bang stuff out, 35:40 then maybe you don't want to work there. 35:42 So it's kind of doing your homework and investigating the work that goes into 35:43 doing what you think you want to do and trying it out 35:49 and deciding if it's right for you. 35:51 I've talked about this a couple times, but the big way that I figure it out 35:54 is look at what you're doing when you're procrastinating from work-- 35:59 the work that you're doing, not just what you're doing. 36:03 If you find yourself focusing in on a really specific part of a project 36:06 because you love doing that part of the project and hate doing all this part of the project, 36:10 that's a sign. That can really help guide what you want to do in the future. 36:13 And really take time to step back and notice those things 36:18 because that's how you guide your career without actually having to make a 5-year plan. 36:21 You just do things based on how they feel and whether you enjoy them, 36:27 and then you can create your own career. 36:31 It doesn't have to be a career that's even been established already. >>That's awesome. 36:33 Jessica, thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. 36:37 Yeah. Thanks for having me. 36:41 [??] [treehouse friends] 36:42

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