Jessica Hische is a lettering artist, entrepreneur, designer, speaker and author who’s worked with clients like Penguin Books and Wes Anderson and recently published a book called “In Progress” which is an incredibly detailed look at her process from sketch to final deliverables – definitely a must-read for any of you lettering fanatics out there. She’s also got this amazing library of side projects like Daily Drop Cap (exactly what it sounds like), a site called Don’t Fear The Internet which teaches HTML and CSS to designers, ShouldIWorkForFree.com – a flow chart which answers that exact question – and literally 10 more. Insanely prolific.
In addition to being an incredibly talented artist Jessica is SMART, holy crap! She semi-jokingly refers to herself as putting the brain of an engineer in a creative role, but that’s really the perfect way to put it – she has a very pragmatic, analytical and no-bullshit way of looking at creativity that’s super refreshing and compelling – if you’re looking for someone to put things gently with a bunch of flowery evocative language then she’s not the one you’re looking for, but – on the other hand – if you want to hear some real talk — practical, specific advice on creating and growing a career in design or any other creative field then you’re in the right place.
Today on the podcast,
- We get into some rarely-discussed characteristics and strengths of creatives, for example that we have an abnormally high degree of introspection baked into us because our field demands constant reflection, self-assessment and often re-invention
- Why constraints are a creative’s best friend. You’ve heard me talk about this – while we may chafe and resist them, the truth is that constraints are an important and incredibly helpful aid to creativity
- She talks about some of the habits that make her as ultra-productive as she is – my favorite is her concept of “admin Mondays” where she packs all that stuff into one day of the week so it never disrupts her creative work
Enjoy!
Design isn’t just a costume that you put on a product at the end
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Some Questions I Ask:
- Can you give us a bit of the backstory to your work and how you got here? [1:40]
- Why do you think you shouldn’t have studied graphic design? [3:05]
- What’s your relationship with your clients? [4:04]
- What is something about you that if they found out they’d be surprised to hear? [11:32]
- What was the change in your work schedule? [12:34]
- Talk about figuring yourself out as a creative. [13:40]
- Tell us about your personal projects. [18:48]
- Tell me your view on going to work. [23:00]
- Talk to me about design thinking culturally. [27:50]
- What are some of your best habits? [34:40]
- Do you have any routines that make you feel like a better human? [37:12]
- Do you have a personal routine that makes you feel like a better human? [39:53]
- Do you have any art to recommend? Something that you liked recently. [42:26]
- What kind of advice would you give to the people following your trail? [45:05]
- Do you have specific career advice for people who want to pursue a career like you have? [47:23]
- What’s the biggest failure that you don’t admit to yourself regularly? [50:44]
- What’s the biggest thing that people would be surprised to find out about you? [51:58]
- Who do you admire? [53:19]
- Is there a New Year’s resolution that you’ve made that you’d like to share with us? [54:38]
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
- How Jessica took the wandering path from being a graphic designer finding her calling, being a lettering artist. [1:55]
- Why you need to be looking for constraints. [4:10]
- The practicality of taking your work on step by step. [6:30]
- Why Jessica prioritizes massive impact on a small scale versus tiny impact on a large scale and how she surrounds herself with the right team to achieve that [8:50]
- How Jessica uses easy tasks to build momentum for the bigger tasks of the day. [10:46]
- Want to get a lot of work done? Surround yourself by people who are busting their butts. [13:00]
- How Jessica always used the act of working to help solve or sidestep her problems. [14:40]
- Jessica’s motherly advice about taking care of yourself to take care of other people. [15:46]
- How prioritizing sleep was a game changer for both me and Jessica and how she uses it to extend her maximum productivity hours. [17:00]
- How Jessica uses personal project time doing things outside her wheelhouse. [19:20]
- How to get people to pay you to do what you want to do. [21:08]
- The pros and cons of being a self employed artist vs climbing the corporate ladder (even in the art world). [23:30]
- My strengths and weaknesses of being in my current role. I like getting my hands dirty as much as I like thinking big, but keep me away from the middle – I’m no manager [27:00]
- Design is more than just putting serifs on a logo. [28:25]
- How I learned about design thinking through a finance app pitch. [30:30]
- Why daily use services should be vanilla. [32:00]
- How great design is like great service at a restaurant. [32:20]
- Why Jessica strips down and dissects problems when they happen rather than accepting them. [35:20]
- How Jessica uses “admin Mondays” to batch her admin work and frees her mind for the rest of the week. [37:50]
- How Jessica uses step by step guided exercise and commuting to hack her meditation practice. [40:35]
- Jessica’s book recommendations: The Secret History and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. [42:35]
- Are you consuming social media more than you’re contributing to it? Might want to flip the ratio there. [45:18]
- Marie Forleo’s advice about comparing; create before you consume and don’t consume the compare-shlager. [46:53]
- Why they make you take electives in college; you’ve got to try things out to figure out if you’re going to like the process of your chosen career [47:34]
- One of the biggest positives about being a career creative is taking time to thinking about whether you’re doing things that you want to be doing [49:00]
- Why Jessica admires how much of a great human+creative Michael Bierut is. [53:35]
This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.
