Author: Emily Ludolph / Source: 99U by Behance
Procrastiworking (noun): The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.
If you’re in the design community, you might already be well acquainted with this word and its definition. And even if you don’t know the term, maybe you know its creator, Oakland-based lettering artist, type designer, illustrator, and author Jessica Hische.
The 34-year-old originally conceived of the word to describe the advice she was giving to young artists who were having trouble figuring out a direction. “Over the course of my career I’ve tried to pay attention to the work that I do when I’m putting off other work,” she explains on her site. Passion projects can be very telling.
Hische discovered procrastiworking for herself at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, when her own passion for graphic design overshadowed her lifelong interest in drawing. “I took a graphic art class and found myself procrastinating from all of my fine art work to work on my graphic design projects,” she recalls. After graduating, Hische transformed this enthusiasm into a successful illustration and lettering career.
Today, Hische’s professional projects reach across mediums and range from corporate powerhouses like Target and Tiffany & Co. to more offbeat indies like McSweeney’s and Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom.
Hische might be as well known for her beautiful hand-drawn letters as she is for her hands-on approach to sharing professional insights. Her prolific, multimedium advice includes speaking at creative conferences, workshops, seminars, and on podcasts.
The artist’s first side project, Daily Drop Cap, a website she created in 2009, offered bloggers an original daily letter illustration to make their blogs more beautiful.She drew her way around the alphabet 12 times for the daily project that effectively transformed into a massive online gallery. Her “Should I Work for Free?” flowchart, an analysis of a question every creative person faces in their career, is online and also available in a letterpress print. Don’t Fear the Internet, a site she created with her web designer husband, Russ Maschmeyer, was meant to demystify HTML for beginner web designers. “I love making things and love creating, but I’m not immune to burnout,” she says. “The work that I do to help others is just the best motivator in the world.”
In her new book, Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave, that encouragement is extended to a much younger audience. It’s an uplifting bedtime story offering children the confidence to try new things. While her first book, In Progress: See Inside a Lettering Artist’s Sketchbook and Process, from Pencil to Vector, literally walked readers through her own creative process, this one is a different kind of support guide. It recognizes that the definitions of success can be different for everyone.
But, Hische might agree, positivity and procrastiworking are good places to start.
Congratulations on Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave. This children’s book offers encouragement to keep trying even if you don’t meet your goals right away. Have there been some moments where you have learned from the process of trying and not always succeeding in the way you imagined?
This theme definitely resonates with me. I feel like it ends up being a central theme of a lot of the public speaking that I do, and a lot of the one-off mentoring sessions I end up having with people. I’m a little addicted to getting coffee with strangers and playing design therapist. Part of the reason why it resonates so much for me is that “big picture” dreams felt so far off when I was younger and still kind of do as an adult. I can feel really demotivated by the scale of big projects and big life shifts.
Achieving is great, but the real accomplishment is pushing through the initial fear to actually start doing something.
Because of that, I’ve sort of adapted to be a person who “Tarzans” through life and through their career – moving forward by grabbing the closest vine, one at a time, until you reach something close to an end goal. Your path isn’t really a straight line and your choices can push you in directions you didn’t initially plan for. I’ve met a lot of people like me – people who for one reason or another feel too intimidated to start something they perceive as being bigger than them, or feel way outside of their comfort zone.
Almost everyone has a fear of failure, and that fear can be really paralyzing when it comes to both life and work. Achieving is great, but the real accomplishment is pushing through the initial fear to actually start doing something.
Is this a lesson your own parents imparted to you as a child, and did it impact your own creative journey?
It definitely came about in my childhood, but probably through my parents trying to comfort me when I was being too hard on myself. I hold myself to a high standard and have a hard time forgiving myself when I mess up. When I was younger, I always felt that once I ruined something, the only way out was a total do-over, not just moving forward and accepting that things can’t always be perfect. I’ve abandoned dozens of sketchbooks because of one bad drawing. I’d given up on courses in school because I got one bad grade and my ability to have straight A’s was ruined.
I put so much pressure on myself that my parents’ main job was to help take the pressure off. I think a lot of kids need this – they need to be pushed to try new things, but too much pressure ruins an activity, dampens your desire to learn and try new things, and can shut you down creatively and otherwise.
Extracurricular projects can be a low-pressure way of exploring new things and even opening new doors. Did Daily Drop Cap impact your career?
Daily Drop Cap was my first big side project. I think the biggest thing it did for me was to give me a story beyond just being another designer doing client work. It was an exercise in creativity for me, challenging me to make new things every day even when I was busy or not feeling particularly motivated. It was a…
The post Jessica Hische: Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave appeared first on FeedBox.