Ep. 119: Lettering Artist Lauren Hom
Lettering artist Lauren Hom was a super shy and studious child. Her crafty mother would make snacks with her initials cut out of cheese slices. In her teenage years, her first love led to slipping grades and the realization that her creativity, not science, would be her path to college. She sold her parents on going to art school with the promise of learning the advertising business. After a brief stint at an ad agency, she started freelancing with her art, and now has made an art out of freelancing.
Read the full transcript here.
Lauren Hom: If there’s anything you want to try out there that you’re scared to do because there are so many other people so far ahead of you, just do it. Because these careers are built up by tons of little steps taken every day and it’s really hard to see that and it’s really hard to see that but it takes a lot of time.
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to hand lettering artist Lauren Hom. Right out of school. Lauren landed her dream job, which quickly turned into a nightmare. That’s when she made a leap to freelancing with her art and in the process, made and art out of freelancing. Now, in addition to her booming hand lettering practice, she also teaches online classes and workshops in her lettering techniques as well as on marketing, freelancing, and getting noticed on social media. I met up with her at the 2019 Adobe MAX conference where we sat down in the airstream podcast lounge to have this chat. Here’s Lauren.
LH: My name is Lauren Hom. I am based in Detroit, Michigan. I have a small studio there, just me and one other team member. And then I have a couple gals who helped me remotely. I am a hand lettering artist, but I'm actually an ex advertising art director turned hand lettering artist through a series of fortunate events. And I think tying that but tying it back to that I do what I do, because art has always been a vehicle for me to express myself and have fun. And I made this career change just by having fun. So that is the basis of my career and the talk that I gave at Max.
AD: Well, we're gonna get way into that again. But first, I want to go all the way back to zero. I read that you were raised in Los Angeles. Is that where you were born as well?
LH: Yes. Okay. My entire family is still local. My dad's coming to see me speak tomorrow awesome.
AD: Okay, tell me about little Lauren Hom like what kind of kid were you? What was your family like? What hey look like to you,
LH: Everyone looks tall because I was tiny. I was a super shy kid. No way. Yes, super creative but kind of shy around my parents totally fine. But I remember my dad will always tell the story of when I was, I think five, four or five. So here in California, we had a preschool and then you can go straight to kindergarten or you could go to DK which was developmental kindergarten, and I ended up going to DK because they gave you this like evaluation. They would like ask you questions with your parents and then they give you your assessment. And intellectually I was good to go to kindergarten, but I did the whole evaluation clung to my dad's leg. So they were like, you should probably send her to DK. I'm the oldest of two kids. Younger brother. He is three years younger than I am, I believe. We had a pretty small family grew up in I grew up maybe 35 minutes south of here with no traffic. Got to kind of just like a beachy, like suburb and it was nice.
AD: What did your parents do?
LH: My mother was a pediatric nurse and my dad couldn't figure out what my dad did for the longest time. He is the CFO of a small company that like buys and sells precious metals. Wow.
AD: Okay, so we've got a business person and a medical person. Did they know what to make of your creativity?
LH: It was pretty supported. So my mom is very creative. She was always very crafty like PTA mom doing stuff decorating the classrooms, hand sewed all of our Halloween costumes up until we were like 12 Wow. Yeah. And I always joke that my very start with lettering how When I was a kid because my mom would make us afternoon snacks where she would cut our names, letters of our names out of slices of American cheese, and serve them to us with Ritz crackers. And she'd like write our names and bubble letters on our lunch pails. So I always joke that my introduction to lettering happened a lot sooner than I realized.
AD: I don't think that's a joke. Actually. I think that made a strong impression on you. Lettering with love, lodged it in your brain.
LH: I don't think my creativity was super out of left field for my parents. Just because my mom has kind of has her creativity on the side. But when I told them I wanted to do it as a career, that's when like the brake started halting a little bit. And it wasn't in a bad way. I think that a lot of parents skepticism about their child. Pursuing art is good intentioned, because you just want your kid to be able to eat and pay their bills and live a happy you know, normal life.
AD: That's what that was my experience. I know they were coming from a good place. But I know they were also very concerned. And I think I hear that so often. That I'm glad that you're here to tell us your story because I'm really interested in debunking that myth of fame here. I think creativity is your most important life skill.
LH: Oh my gosh, absolutely.
AD: So we're gonna get into that. But before that, I need to hear about your teenage years because those are important years. We all have to like for jarred identity somewhere and of yours. Yes. Were you strong willed and rebellious. Were you sort of studious and like? You know, they were chewed out obedient?
LH: So the early part of my teens. The first part of my teens, my tweens. Super studious, was, you know, played in band was on I was on the math team in middle school.
AD: What instruments do you play?
LH: I played the flute. Awesome, huh? And now I love that Lizzo's making flute a thing. Yes. But yes, super studious, like goody two shoes. And then when I was 16 I fell in love with my first boyfriend and my grades started slipping this sounds so fucking cliche, I really hate it. But at the same time, I don't hate it because I'm here doing what I'm doing now. And like, I'm a big believer that even with road bumps or hiccups or things not going according to plan, it's putting you in a direction and like that could lead to better things or just not even better, different things. Had I stayed on my studious path. Maybe I would be like a Nobel Prize winner someday. Or maybe I would have been like a college professor, who knows?
AD: Or maybe you'd be an accountant and hating it. That could be true too and not finding your agency through creativity. Yeah, I mean, I really do think creativity. Being able to operate in that mindset makes you feel like things that don't exist yet can exist. Yes, you I can see things that don't aren't there yet. So you feel like you can get there.
LH: Yeah, you can imagine, I guess a more colorful future for yourself. And I think it's such it is such a gift. Absolutely. I was just a teenager trying to be cool and like, so my grades slipped to the point where I wasn't failing out of school. Don't worry, you know, every Asian parent is like clutching their pearls right now. It's fine. I was fine. I maybe went from like a 4.1 GPA to like a 3.2, which is significant. And so my grades weren't what I wanted them to be to do what I thought I was going to do, which was, you know, I come from a UCLA family. I thought I was just going to go to school, maybe major in math or science or who knows? And yeah, and then when I realized that, okay, like, maybe that's not as much of an option anymore. I had been doing art my whole life. It was always something that like your earlier question my parents nurtured they sent me to music class, art class, whatever I want. Wanted, we drew a lot at home, like, super supportive, but then when I was like, okay, maybe I'll go to art school and be a graphic designer, you know, be a painter. I don't know. My parents were like, are you sure you want to do that? And they came at it with a loving skepticism like I think most parents do. And then I found advertising. I took a class in high school on the weekend at Pasadena Art Center, like an extracurricular thing. And I realized after talking with my teacher, I was like, Oh, you can design ads and brainstorm ads. And that seems to be this perfect intersection between making something creative but also having like a practical marketing like real world, selling products kind of job. So I sold my parents on that. And so they sent me to art school to go major in advertising.
AD: Okay. So you went to SVA, New York City, what was the transition like from Los Angeles to New York City for you?
LH: I barely can remember now. It was fine. I was talking Baby, I had never even sounds so silly to say now. I had ever never even done my own laundry before I went to college. My mom was a stay at home mom. Okay. And so it was good. I intentionally chose to apply to schools far away from where I grew up. Just because I, my gut feeling was that I wanted to try something new and college seemed like a good time to do that and to get out of my comfort zone and go far away. And I think you see a lot of like la people who grew up in LA go to the east coast and people who grew up on the East Coast go to LA and it's just a coastal swap that creatives tend to do. And it was fine. It was just cold. Really it. I live in Michigan now. So it's a little colder, but I always joke that New York prepared me for Detroit.
AD: Okay, so we have to talk about this later. But I was born in Michigan, then went to New York City and now I live in Los Angeles. We've got some city parallels. Okay, so you studied advertising at SVA. You got your degree. And in 2013, you graduated. And then you got your dream job.
LH: I did. Yeah. So I went through the four year BFA program for advertising. My partner and I, you know, went to go look for jobs together got hired together since I have people in advertising work in pairs. We were both art directors, though. So we were like, Oh, I don't know if anyone's gonna hire us. But turns out when an agency sees two art directors, they're like, Oh, great, double the hands who can make Dolby heads? Because copywriting is super valuable, but they were like, they'll figure it out. It's fine. And so we were just the double art director team. But actually, right before I graduated, I did get so I did get my dream job. But I took a I think at SBA, we had our foundation year and then second year, I had to take an intro to typography class, and I fell in love with type there and just continue to dabble. And then my third year, I had one slot left for a class that wasn't advertising. So I took A Communication Design class with Gail Anderson, who's phenomenal. I don't know if you've ever had her on the podcast, but she was pretty pivotal actually, in what I'm doing today, took her class and it was the first class where we had very open briefs of like, what we could make she, she would give us assignments, like, design an ABC book about any topic you want or rebrand your favorite neighborhood in New York City, design a deck of cards, and like there was no really direction it was like whatever you want it to be. And the common thread between all my projects with these open briefs were humor and food. I was exploring those unintentionally it wasn't even like intentional it was just, that's where my mind went. So when everyone else was designing a deck of playing cards, I made a deck of recipe cards. And so my personality as a designer and an artist started coming out there and she recognized that and I was starting to incorporate some of my type and lettering into those projects, because it was my outlet outside of all my ad classes and I still really liked it. But my interest started to peak in this other stuff. And I remember that like maybe one month into class, she pulled me aside and she was like, Hey, I think you're in the wrong major, you should be a designer or an illustrator. And I was like, Oh, yeah, no, like I'm three years into add. I'm not I'm not gonna abandon the ship, because it just seemed like a huge risk. And I had a couple friends who have switched majors. But to me, I'm a very risk averse person. People don't believe me when I say that. And so I was ready to I was committed to staying the course. And she was like, No, really, you should and she was like, have you ever heard of Louise Fili before? And I was like, yeah, duh. Louise Fili is amazing. And she was like, I'm friends with Louise, you should intern for her. And so she got me an internship with Louise Fili my third year of school, and I still was gonna go do advertising.
AD: How was that internship for you?
LH: It was lovely. If anything, I was just doing intern stuff like scanning in pieces of type and helping,
AD: You were just witnessing Yeah, in action.
LH: Just in the environment. It was so important I think, as creatives our environments are so important. And so here I was sitting in this little studio, really close to the college campus. And I was like, wait, here's someone who, it's her two designers. And she's doing all type and like she's built a career doing this. Maybe I could do that someday, too. And so I was there for three months. Super fun gotten a Louise. She's super sweet. We still keep in touch. And I know she doesn't really open up internships very often. And so I'm super grateful to Gail for that opportunity. And for seeing that in me and I probably see Gail once a year now and she'll always point out, she's like, I saw it coming like I knew, and I was like, yeah, you were right. So I guess the moral of that story is if Gail Anderson says you should do something, she's probably right.
AD: And the other moral of the story is Hooray for art teachers.
LH: So because of that love of type that had been like nurture my third year, second third year of school, even though I was staying the course, a senior year of school, I started a hand lettering blog, because I got drunk with my roommate. And we had this funny idea where I was like, I'm gonna letter all the little white lies that my girlfriends and I tell ourselves because there's so many like, I'm not drinking this weekend, or like, you know, I'll just have one bite of that cake, silly stuff like that. And I started a Tumblr blog, where I was posting these little white lies just hand lettered pretty poorly, I'll be honest, but I was doing it because I thought that because they were these kind of quirky little white lies, it would be better to do it by hand than to just type it out in a font. And so that was kind of like my art direction background coming into play. And because I was an ad major My brain just was primed to think in like, bite sized campaigns. And so it was such a natural thing for me to just package up this one idea as like a campaign. So I called it Daily Dishonesty, made a little Tumblr blog for it designed a little header. And I was publishing these a couple times a week, and it took off on the internet. I had no idea it was going to take off. I had 1000 followers and then 10,000 followers. So by the time I graduated, that advertising program, just fast forwarding, I was signing a book deal for my blog, while I was getting my advertising degree like diploma handed to me. And so I was at this really weird Crossroads where I was going to go into advertising, we had already landed a job. But the amazing thing was happening with this, like, budding talent of mine, and like you said, risk averse. I took the job. I was like, You know what, I can see an inkling of this happening, but like, I bet in five years, I'll have to make that decision. Like I don't have to make it now. I'll just go into advertising and You know, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
AD: Okay. So for context, you started your blog in like 2012?
LH: October 2012. Okay, I graduated in May 2013. So it was fast. It was seven months.
AD: Had you had any experience with I mean, things going viral was relatively new at that.
LH: I feel like that dates me so much. It is yeah. I had no experience with that. It was super strange, but it was also my first bit of external validation of like, wait, there could be a larger audience. He wants to see this because I really just made that blog for me and my friends, my classmates, because that was what we were going through, you know, we were just getting drunk and going to art school to be completely transparent and it took on this life of its own and I wasn't really prepared for it. I started getting freelance work inquiries. I was I submitted it to award shows because that's what you do with advertising. You submit your work to award shows, and I started I won a Webby Award. I won a Communication Arts, typographic annual award, all for this silly project.
AD: So it's clearly not silly, but I am sure you started it feeling like well, this isn't you know, this is just a fun thing that I'm doing.
LH: I actually remember Yeah, I made a Facebook post when I first launched it, just on my personal Facebook being like, Hey, I know everyone in their grandma like is doing hand lettering now, which isn't quite true, because now everyone is doing hand lettering, which is a good thing. I love that. And I really had no expectations for it. All I knew is that I wanted an outlet outside of my ad program to be able to be creative because it's just different kinds of creativity.
AD: So back then it sounds like you have this this blog going viral and a book deal happening and you also have a job on the table. And are they are they working together to complement each other? Are they kind of opposing each other?
LH: Totally opposing.
AD: Okay, so what kind of tension was happening for you there like did you feel you had to pick one or the other And so, for me kind of quiet one to make your bosses happy or like, what how did that look?
LH: I don't think my bosses knew any of that was going on. And like, I didn't really think it was that big of a deal. So I always saw the daily dishonesty lettering stuff as like my side dish advertising was going to be my main dish, I was staying the course. And so at first it was fine. But as basically as my satisfaction with my ad job started declining, and my satisfaction with my lettering was increasing. That's where it hit the most tension because I was like, I would really, I'm working, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day at the agency. I'd much rather be doing the lettering stuff for that long, but I can't like I'm not gonna be working on other stuff in front of my bosses. Like that's not cool. I still like I feel like it's ingrained in me to like, do what you say you're gonna do and like be a good employee. I was a good employee, I like to think. And, yeah, so I basically, instead of having to choose one, I just tried to do both. So I was pulling you know, over time. For both of those things. I was working at the agency and Like, on the train ride into my job, which was about 40 minutes, I would brainstorm different daily dishonesty phrases, because I was basically working on the manuscript for the book, which was, I remember when I signed the book deal, I just thought I was like, oh, they're just going to take all the illustrations I've already made, make them into a book. That's cool. And my publisher was like, Oh, no, that's not how blog to book works. We need 70% new content. So people buy the book, which totally makes sense now. So I was cranking out new daily dishonesty pieces for the blog, but also for the book that I couldn't release on the blog. So I was just churning these out. So on my train ride in, I would brainstorm them and then I'd get to work during my lunch break. I'd like to sketch them out. I'd get home and then I would pop up in my bottle of white wine and get to work. It was not glamorous, and it was more work than like, I think the average person should have been doing but had I not done that or felt so convicted to do that. I don't think I'd be sitting here today.
AD: What was so dissatisfying about the ad agency job? Like, where was it, leaving you cold.
LH: So for me, I was super grateful to have the job it was it was in all aspects my dream job until I was in there for a couple months. And I think I was just a bright eyed bushy tailed, like recent grad who thought that working at an agency was going to be like being in ad School, which is totally not the case, you know. And at school, you can make any ad you want for any brand and like put it in your portfolio. For me, the biggest dissatisfaction was the fact that we were working hard on these pitches or working on campaigns and they would get killed by the client and never see the light of day. And I just had a little bit of frustration not being able to I didn't feel like I was providing any value. I remember eight months into the job. We even went to our Executive Creative Director and we were like, We haven't sold any work through Are we going to get fired? like are we doing a bad job? But he was like, No, you guys are doing a good job, like, shit happens, you know, that's just how the agency nature of the business and like you have to have a thick skin and like you'll still work through eventually Don't worry. And I personally was just feeling disheartened. I think it was also because it was in such a stark contrast to here I am putting in 12 hours a day at the agency, not selling any work through or any of it seeing the light of day. I can't tell anyone I did that because it's not in the wild. Whereas I was spending maybe 12 hours a week working on lettering and daily dishonesty. And anything I made, I had full creative control over and could also publish. And so I had this free flow of creativity and being able to share it and get that satisfaction out of it being in the wild that my ad job wasn't giving me and so I think I just there was a moment where I took a step back and I was like, wait a second this. This one feels a lot better. And like what if I just switched the numbers and like was working on lettering 12 days or 12 hours a day? What would that look like and so That started to get the wheels turning of like, well, maybe I could do my own thing. And so it wasn't it wasn't the worst job. It was just I guess relative to what was going on. I had this like little shimmer of like something else happening.
AD: The way you’re illustrating it for me I'm seeing like one road is all red lights. You can't you're not getting anywhere you're putting in, you're stuck in traffic and the energy is all jammed up.
LH: Yeah, traffic is a great way to put it. It was out of my control what was -.
AD: And then the other one, it's like you're zipping through the lights turning green people are waving to you. They're like, hey, Lauren, good to see you today. Like, this is so much better.
LH: Exactly. That's such a great analogy.
AD: So but you probably had to figure out within yourself if you could hang with the idea of building your own business. I mean, at that point, you're probably thinking a freelance kind of career.
LH: Yeah, I had seen you know, Jessica Hische, Dana Tanamachi, Jon Contino do their thing being Type focused. There was existence of that being a thing.
AD: Did you have to pitch your parents on the idea?
LH: I remember calling my dad when I had made the decision that I wanted to leave. I called my dad and I was like, I did that thing where I was like, Hey, Dad, about to say something and you promise you won't get mad, right?
LH: Which is such a terrible thing to preface the conversation was like,
AD: I can feel him just like zipping up tensing.
LH: Exactly. But yeah, there. It was scary because you even when you see other people doing the thing you want to do and you're like, Okay, well, there's obviously market demand. There's other people paving the way. When you think of it through the lens of yourself doing it. It's terrifying and me being really risk averse person. I was weighing out these, you know, I'm not super happy at my job, but it is a job and it's consistent and I get paid. And like, Am I throwing away four years of studying advertising? Like what does it all mean? And what if this lettering thing doesn't work out? You know, will people think I'm a quitter or fool or all this stuff and I finally made the realization, or the, I guess I had the realization that, okay, I'm 23 years old. And the difference between getting another ad job at 24 versus 23 is pretty negligible. Like the one thing I hear from older creatives and people who have more experience is age is like being young is such a gift in terms of how you can recover, it's so much easier to recover. It's kind of like how people say like, you know, when you have a longer time horizon for your investments, you can be riskier and that's why there are things like Target funds that like get less risky as you get older so you can retire in peace. And so you can think about if anyone's listening right now and you're like 21 or 22. Not to say that if you're 35 You shouldn't follow your dreams but especially if you are that you are the age that I was when I made my jump you really have very little to lose, you will figure it out. And so I realized that if I give this thing a shot, and it doesn't work out, and I burn through, you know, more savings that I'm comfortable with, okay, then maybe I moved back in with my parents, okay, that's not great. And then, if I still can't make it doing lettering, I'll just go back and get another job. I still have the resume. It's not my first choice. But it wouldn't be the worst thing. When people think about failing at following their dreams or being freelance, they think of like, going back to square one and having to start from scratch. But you still have all the tools in your tool belt at your disposal.
AD: Yeah it sounds like you were making a calculated risk.
LH: Yes.
AD: And that you had the advertising thing, not only to help you sort of figure out how to build your business and market yourself, but you also had the advertising thing to fall back on. Yes. And you were sort of faced with a decision like I could do what makes me happy or I could not do what akes me happy and keep doing what doesn't make me happy. I can always go back and do that.
LH: I realized if nothing changed, everything would stay the same. But if I tried and failed, things would just go back to being the same, more or less, right. And so that realization was like, What? What do I have to lose? I also had a really good conversation with one of my mentors. His name's Justin Gignac, we met, he gave a lecture during one of my ad classes, actually. And I met him in person a couple years later and was a little bit drunk and started gushing about his work. And we actually became friends. He runs a website called Working Not Working. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's like a creative recruitment site. And he was working on that. And he left advertising to pursue freelance and then work on that. And so I was like, Okay, I'll talk to Justin because he's walked the walk and like, is doing his own thing now. And he was like, okay, so you're like, not happy in advertising. And you're like, considering it and I was like, Yeah, but like, You know, I've only been here for eight months, like, Is it too fast to make this decision? Like, maybe I'll stay for a year and get it on my resume and see how it feels, then like, if I get if I at least get one year at a job on my resume, then if I have to go back, employers aren't going to be like, why did you only stay for you know, eight months? That looks weird. And because that was just the general advice I had heard. I don't know where that comes from. And he without missing a beat looked at me and he was like, Well, why does your advertising resume matter if you don't want to work in advertising? And I had like a pooo.
AD: Yeah, you mean bet on myself?
LH: Exactly. And he's like, if you don't like it now, chances are, you're not gonna like it later. And if you do, you're probably just convincing yourself that you know, because we do, you know, have to adapt to our situation. And it's not it really isn't the worst. I always make it a point to let people know like, I'm not shitting on advertising. It just wasn't the right path for me. And I also want to let people know who also are feeling a little bit burnt at that job? Like there is another way to I think every art director probably also draws or does photography or does some other kind of visual craft copywriters, you know, do their own writing projects, too. We're all creative in different ways outside of our jobs.
AD: Well, and I think now the climate is such that those side projects, those side dishes make you more desirable. That wasn't the climate then. And also, you didn't have the time, the energy, there wasn't enough of Lauren to go to both. So you made the choice. And you built your business. You started in New York City and did all that there.
LH: I left my advertising job in April of 2014. And I remember the first day waking up, not having to go to work on a Monday and just feeling so weird. I was like, am I playing hooky like what's going on? It was like being a student again. To be honest, and I guess it wasn't that bad because I had just been a student like 10 months before. And so it wasn't too unfamiliar. Started working out of my bedroom. I had a little IKEA desk next to my bed. I shared a three bedroom apartment with two girlfriends. And I just started from there. I really love that the startup cost of being a freelancer is so low, because you pretty much have what you need to get started internet, laptop, your tools.
AD: So you started with your book deal and with taking some of the freelance inquiries you'd been getting?
LH: Yes. So um, when daily dishonesty started and the book deal came around and things started circulating around the internet. It was really just a kind of Domino chain reaction. You know, so the reason my literary agent found me was because daily dishonesty had been getting featured on design blogs getting pinned to different Pinterest boards circulating around there. People started discovering me that way and You know, me knowing that I'd only been lettering for six months was like, why would you trust me to do anything like I'm just this novice letterer. But what I always tell people is when someone comes into contact with your work, they don't know that. For all they know you've been doing this for 10 years and no one's really going to dig deep, like that deep to be like, How long has this person been doing it if they like the work, they like the work. That's really all it is. And so I started getting freelance work. And I was like, Okay, I'll take on as much freelance work, as my schedule will allow while I was still a full time student, I was also interning and working part time as a student, I've always just been a very busy person. And then at my full time job, I was still taking the occasional freelance project here and there while I was working full time, I made time for it and if anything, those little bits of freelance as I was working full time, gave me more and more it built up my confidence and gave me validation that hey, maybe I can make this a thing. I also going back to the nerdy thing, crunched the numbers towards the maybe six months into the job, I crunched the numbers and I was like, okay, divided my salary by like the hours, I was working like a 40 Hour Work Week. And I was like, Okay, I'm making like, $25 an hour as my salary. I'm getting paid $75 an hour for lettering for freelance, and I'm not doing a ton of it. But I'm doing enough where, if I could just get a third of the hours that I'm getting with my full time job with lettering, I could make the same salary. And yes, there are freelance expenses and all those things, but that math honestly gave me the like, kind of objective confirmation like, hey, that wouldn't be so bad. Like, I bet I could do that. And so that built my confidence.
AD: Fantastic. Okay, so now you've been doing your thing for like five years. What does the business look like today because I know that you're you're still taking calls If you're making, you know, regalia out of bread, we'll talk about flour crowns. But you're also teaching other creatives how to market themselves. Give me a snapshot, an overview of the of the business. Okay, and then tell me a little bit about each branch of it.
LH: Absolutely. And so, like most freelancers, I started off doing 100% client work and trying to build that up. And once that started working, and I was getting to a good point, I will say to that, right when I left my full time job, I signed with an agent, which was super helpful, too. And the reason I got an agent was because I was 23. And I didn't think I didn't think anyone was going to be willing to pay a 23 year old like serious money. When in reality no one I was the only one who knew I was 23
AD: But when you're 23 and you think they're not going to take you seriously? Yeah, it does make you, apprehensive about like taking meetings like this. Wanna see me that I'm a kid, and then my cover is gonna be blown. And it's a very weird feeling.
LH: Because the conventional metrics that we use to gauge like, credibility are like time, a lot of the time
AD: middle aged white male.
LH: It's like, yeah, how long have you been doing this? You know, how many years of experience and so I just felt like no one was going to take me seriously. But that insecurity actually prompted me to hustle and try to find an agent and I did. And so the business now so I started off doing all freelance and then as it usually goes, and you know, I, I'm very lucky that my career and what I was doing started happening around the time of like, social media to like, you know, I caught that Tumblr wave and then I caught this Instagram wave and what was I gonna say, oh, shoot, so I caught those waves and I started building an audience around my work. It happened with daily dishonesty. And then I got on Instagram right after I graduated and it feels weird thinking that I didn't have Instagram in college. That's what design students have now. So people naturally just started emailing me leaving comments being like, hey, how do you do this? Or like, how do you do that thing? Or like how did you go freelance and me just being me was like, yeah, sure, I'll tell you no big deal. And so at the beginning, I really love that I was able to like answer to every single person. And I'm an open book because I have always been so grateful for anyone sharing any information about what it looks like on the other side. I remember, you know, sifting through Jessica Hische’s website and some of her blog posts. Just devouring anything that gave me real numbers or gave me a real inside perspective on like, what I was getting myself into, hmm. And it can be hard to say those things in a public forum. But at the same time, it only helps other designers like we're all in the same kind of community. And so I was an open book and as more people kept asking, I started offering you know, in person workshops and it was a very natural progression. So now fast forward to now I teach in person, I did one on Sunday, actually here. And I also teach online classes now because it's the beauty of the internet, not everyone can book a flight, you know, from wherever they are to come learn from me. And I'm not at every single conference around the world. And online teaching has been a good way to reach people who can't come directly to me or should never cross paths otherwise. And so I do a little bit of everything. And so the business right now is kind of split up into I'd say 55% is still client work, I still do a ton of that. I just get to be more selective now, which is what happens over time. And also I get to be more selective because you know, when you're a young freelancer, you're like young and hungry and taking whatever you can get. And in hindsight, I wish I hadn't taken some of the projects that I took because they were a headache or like not the best alignment,
AD: but you have to learn that
LH: Exactly. And so I always tell people to if you take a project for way less than you should have or if you make mistake. It's just information for next time, there will be a next time and so no sweat. It's just a learning experience. And so yeah, I'd say then maybe 40% is online teaching and in person teachings educational, and then the other, like 5% is just a little hodgepodge of speaking. And, you know, maybe the occasional influencer thing here and there now that I have a large audience, that's a new thing for me relatively new, I think for the creative community. So I'd say that's the break, like the breakdown of what the business is now, and it's good. I wish someone earlier had told me to think of myself not just as a freelancer, like I'm going to do freelance lettering and client work, and that's going to be it. It's actually from a business perspective, and I do not have a business background. This is all just kind of like I've been going off on gut feelings. I am very observant of things going on and maybe my advertising background helps but diversifying your income streams is super helpful as a creative And most other businesses diversify their income streams like you look at a restaurant they do they have the restaurant but they also have an event space that they rent out they also do catering you know, they also have some of their like homemade sauces for sale at the front like most businesses are diversifying. And I wish I had started looking at myself that way from the beginning rather than luckily I happen to like naturally discover it.
AD: So flour crowns is an Instagram. Ooh, oh, is an Instagram. I don't know self project. Would you say it's a it's just a passion project?
LH: jUST a passion project, initiated for fun.
AD: Okay, and you assemble crowns out of baked goods?
LH: Yes. Ideally flour based.
AD: Did this just start as a silly fun thing? And then you started thinking, how many different crowns Can I make out of different baked goods?
LH: Yes, so it did start as a silly fun thing. But it was more calculated in the sense of after daily dishonesty, I probably did four more of those kind of bite sized passion projects where I gave it a name, it had its own website. So I realized there is this kind of system or formula for using my creativity but in a like strategic way and a more digestible way. Because there's so much content out there and especially now but even back then, you know, there Tumblr like Pinterest and it can be overwhelming for someone to stumble across 10 pieces of your work that aren't cohesive. And so, when you think in a series, it actually gives people something to remember you by it's easier for someone to be like, okay, daily dishonesty little white lies got it. Right.
AD: They can wrap their head around them, okay.
LH: Like when people say like, what's your elevator pitch? You know, that was my elevator pitch my passion projects or individual elevator pitches for what I'm interested in or what I might be looking to get hired for. Gotcha. And so flour crowns, I was browsing through Instagram One morning, this is me February 2016. And February is like two months before music festival season starts like Coachella and all that good stuff. And so a lot of like, fashion inspiration was coming through just I saw it around the internet. And all the girls were the flower crowns and being a letterer my brain made upon and I was like, oh, what if it was a different kind of flower? And immediately I did that thing where I told myself, Oh, no, that's a dumb idea. Don't do it. But so many times I feel like we brush off those dumb ideas that make us laugh because we're like, oh, Well, it probably went turned into anything. And so I texted my friends. I was like, hey, like, what do you think of this and they thought it was funny. I have like my trusted group of girlfriends who are just like me who are kind of a good sounding board. And so I was like, You know what, that'd be fun. I of course have always loved food and had been looking to incorporate more food into my work anyways, and I've been doing lettering at that point for three years straight. And it's a good thing it's I think it's a gift and curse of being creative is like the thing that excites you and that you absolutely love you can still get bored of you know, and so I still wanted to do lettering, it was paying the bills and everything was great, but my creative itch was there and so I was like, why don't I try something new food is still on brand for me. So I was about to go visit my grandma for two weeks right before I had the idea. So I bought all the supplies paper backdrops, headbands, wire, like when I got there, I went to go get bread but I ordered all those supplies to her house, poor grandma just getting all these packages. And I created and shot 20 flower crowns in a span of like a week. I think it took me a couple days to make them and I would just like store them very gently and then I would go shoot them in her backyard, I taped the paper to the to the wall and just shot them on my digital camera with a self timer. It was really low budget really low tech This is in Los Angeles. Yeah, Grandma, Thanks for supporting the project.
LH: You know, it was one of those things where it was a silly idea. But when I executed it, I was strategic about Okay, I'm gonna batch to these together. And once I have the raw photos, then I can drip them out whenever I want. And that's one thing too, that from the outside looking in. When you see someone posting images on their Instagram or part of a project, we as the viewer think like, Oh, look at this person producing all this work, how do they have the time, a lot of people batch their stuff like and it's it's smart to do that. Everything you put out on the internet doesn't have to be made in real time. No one's looking for that. And so you can be as your time becomes more scarce. You have to kind of get creative with how you budget your time and how you plan things out. And so I batched all of those and just slowly drip them out over like six months.
AD: I'm so glad you shared that because that strategy behind that makes a lot of sense. And it was kind of leading into the next question I was going to ask you about your creative process. You do all these self initiated projects, which now I'm understanding is very smart because it helps you attract the kind of clients that you want to do the kind of work that you want.. When you're doing the self initiated projects, it's not that they're not calculated, but it would you say what's driving them is more in the category of inspiration or fear.
LH: I think there's probably a tinge of fear and everything everyone does, right. Someone asked me at the end of my q&a yesterday, what my favorite project I've ever done was, and I love all my projects, but daily dishonesty. There's something there because I had no idea it was the purest form of creation I've ever done because I had no expectations. I wasn't trying to become a letterer This wasn't an Instagram thing. I had No followers, so there was nothing to lose. And I really just made it from a pure place. And now, it doesn't mean that everything you have to make has to be pure, because there's strategy involved and all and a lot of design things. But now I think of things through the lens of, you know, what is this going to do for me? Like, how can it be strategic, and that's not a bad thing. But I'd say for my passion projects, because my time is so scarce now, or free time to work on these things. I try to operate out of a place of I only want to work on a side project, if it's going to be fun, because even when you love what you do, it's still work and it's going to be stressful, and it's still going to take up a big chunk of your day. So for me, I've always seen passion projects and side projects as it's just as much for me personally, as it is for whatever the extra benefits it's going to have to my career. So I do try to lead with creativity first fun, and so hopefully there's not too much fear in there, but I'm sure there's an underlying like I'd be lying if I said that. Wasn't a little bit because I think there's a pressure on creative now because of how much content is out there and how many people we follow and how much is getting put in front of us that we feel like we're never creating enough. And there's just it's, we're always behind. And so there is a little bit of that urgency as a modern working creative, I'll admit that, you know, what is my next thing going to be? What am I going to be putting out? And so these passion projects, really just check all those boxes of, I make sure the idea is something that I like, hence, like flour crowns, like it's something that I like and that I'm interested in something that you know, I have time to do I have to be realistic too. But also something a little bit of is this going to push my career in the direction I want it to go? Or I think I want it to go in. So flour crowns food related, you know, yeah, there was a little bit of that. So it really checked all the boxes. It's kind of messed up that being a being a long term working creative. We still have to get ourselves pepped up about what we do, even when we love what we do.
AD: Man, that's that's an important part of the whole program. So that's kind of leads me to this question, which is, what are the things that are like the comfort food of your job? And what are the things that are adventurous, which also means they're kind of scary, but you can tell you're growing.
LH: Ooh. So I think my comfort food has been and still is, like, rooted in the idea I had for myself. When I first started out, I thought I was just going to do freelance lettering work. So client work is my businesses and my, I guess my lettering comfort food because that's what I'm used to. I'm good at it. There's been a straight steady stream of it. It's what I know and it's also just what I thought of myself doing. And the Kind of Adventurous stuff in the last three years has been the teaching and the like in house stuff in a way of like, Okay, I'm a freelancer. I do lettering for clients, but also like Wow, I have an audience of almost 200,000 people now and like, what could be fun to make for them? And that's a completely new avenue that I never thought I'd be exploring because of the expectations I had. And that feels fun and exciting, but also a little scary because I don't know. And also because the thing I find comfort in with client work is that someone else is giving you parameters, a brief, a deadline, and you're just like, great, I can execute put my headphones in Netflix on in the background, whatever it may be. With the self initiated stuff for my in house, you know, in house work. I'm the creative director and I also am the producer and the project manager and being able to do anything can be just as crippling as being able to do very little because you get choice paralysis,
AD: Right, and choice paralysis, and also the internet's not as safe as it used to be. People are ready to not like what you do.
LH: I always tell people to like the Instagrams a generally a pretty friendly place like iron clad you probably will get on YouTube at some point, but I'm terrified because the YouTube my boyfriend runs a YouTube channel. Just brutal.
AD: I'm glad you brought up the boyfriend because we're segwaying into your personal life. I know this is probably a different boyfriend but what happened boyfriend from high school.
LH: So I have three boyfriend stories. Boyfriend from high school, we were highschool sweethearts, everything was great. We were just really young. And so that was a totally good relationship. Like I really am glad that I had him around like during high school and we grew up together and like supporting each other and it's hard being a teenager you're going through some weird shit. Oh, yeah. And so it was really nice having each other during that time. And so I'm really grateful for that. I guess my second boyfriend story I went through another breakup right around when I got my full time job and that spurred a whole other passion project. I launched a line of flasks called ex boyfriend tears. Oh, and that is totally out of character for me, actually. But I was heartbroken and kind of mad and it wasn't as nice of a breakup as the first boyfriend. Okay. And so based on that just random life experience, you can't control when you fall in love or when you break up. I use my creativity to talk about that experience. And it just happened to manifest into a flask that said ex boyfriend tears on it. But yeah, my my current boyfriend, he is a product designer and front end dev, which I totally have not been taking advantage of. And so I've been having him do a lot of websites for me. It's been great. We met in New York, and now we live in Detroit.
AD: Tell me about Detroit. So I'm from Ypsilanti. Originally, that's where I was born and raised about half an hour Southwest. I have deep love and affection for Detroit. How did you end up there and what are your feelings about it?
LH: So we met in New York and then we went to go travel for a bit because we were both feeling And but we would take advantage of that. And it was great. But when we were ready to come back to the United States, he had quit all of his freelancing work. And he was like, I want to start this company. I'm really interested in YouTube and like gear reviews, totally different wheelhouse than what I do. He's way more type A and I'm more type B. He loves like spreadsheets and like analytics. Hence, the front end of stuff. So he runs a business called pack hacker, which I named I'm always very good. I have a knack for like, catchy names, and stickiness matters. And like this day and age where everyone's got like a millisecond of attention left, right. So he reviews backpacks for a living. I never thought that was going to be a thing. But he does that. And so he decided to get that off the ground, quit all his freelance work are most of it. And so we were like, okay, we both work remotely, you're going to start a new business. Let's not move back to New York, one of the most expensive cities. It's fun. Our friends are there but we are in a really lucky The position that we don't have to be anywhere at any given time, so let's use that to our advantage. So we asked our friends, Hey, where's a place where artists are living that has a good airport. That's a lower cost of living in New York. And the results we got back were like you should check out Austin, Nashville and Detroit. And that was really how we made our decision. We went to go visit all three of those cities. We got an Airbnb and just stayed in each one for a month to kind of get a feel of it. And we just liked Detroit the best.
AD: best. The people are so real. It's so gritty and scrappy and resilient. And there's deep history and Motown and the Motor City and don't get me started. I love Detroit so much.
LH: We, honestly I had never been there before. Tom had been there before. He grew up in Minneapolis, too. So he was familiar with the apalis. Do I like Minneapolis because we'd go back to see his family. And I was like, why don't we just go to Minneapolis. He's like, we're not going back to my hometown and I respect that because I understand not wanting to be back in your hometown. Because I think creatives are adventurous. You want to try something new if you have the opportunity. So when we visited Detroit, I didn't really know what to expect. But to be honest, like to, I guess, simplify things. It felt the most like New York out of all those cities Austin's amazing, Nashville's amazing, but we felt the most at home in Detroit. And you know, we knew there were art schools there and they were artists living there. And there were people who were trying to build something and make something and like you said the scrappiness. And so we vibed with that, and we just kind of made a decision based off of exactly what I told you. It really wasn't a super well thought decision where we thought about it for a year and analyzed it. And it didn't even really seem that risky, you know, me being a risk averse person because we had been traveling for a while and we had both lived in a couple cities and we knew that like, if we didn't like it after a year, we could just figure out another place to go.
AD: And then it's very got a very DIY ethic to it and just really built on this idea of, you know, building, I can build anything I want here. So it makes perfect sense that you landed there. And speaking of building things, you seem like a very put together person, but I know that we're not always all put together. So I'm kind of curious, like when you actually break down or fall apart, okay, or have a meltdown, or feel like you've made a terrible and correctable mistake, like when it does really fall apart. How do you personally put yourself back together?
LH: I'm trying to think because I'm trying to think of a like, mistake I've made that I felt like wasn't correctable. I think everything who has I follow this woman, she's like a business coach named Marie Forleo. was lovely and she her motto is everything is figure-out-able. for me when I feel burnt or broken, The hardest part for me because I think a lot of creatives are this way too. We're so creative and we know we can figure things out and build things that we have a hard time admitting when like, we need, like, oh, shoot, like, I can't fix this, or I can't do this alone, or I can't do this myself. Because we have such a DIY attitude. Mm hmm. I have to first be honest with myself and be like, okay, hold up, like you got to take a break or something's not working. How do I build myself back up? Honestly, the way I've always found my way back to myself and, you know, big moves in my business has been to follow the fun and have fun again, and it seems like overly simplistic advice to give to people or how I use it for myself, but it really does boil back down to Chantel Martin had an amazing quote in her talk this morning in the keynote about she asked the audience, like how many of you can draw and like 20% of us raised her hands. And she was and she was saying, Okay, well everybody in the audience like, how can you not do something as an adult that you could do when you were a child when you were two years old, three years old? And like, yes, you can draw. And so for me, I kind of have to go back to the place of like, when I was a kid, when we were all kids, we made weird stuff for fun, we glued macaroni to pay for we just created because it felt good and didn't like fill up the time. So I have to get back to that a lot of the time. And it doesn't always look like a passion project. Sometimes it's going to a vintage store and browsing around. Sometimes it's going to a used bookstore, sometimes it's cooking an elaborate five course meal, because I wanted to. I think that because I wanted to mentality and those kinds of projects are what always build me back up and get me back on track. And I will say that every creative person who's trying to find this intersection of their creativity and then making a living from it. You're gonna burn out at some point and you're gonna have to find those ways to get yourself personally back up. But get yourself creatively back up. And so for me, it's doing those things that just make me happy. Creating just for fun. It seems overly simplistic, but it works for me.
AD: Is that what fulfillment tastes like?
LH: I think so. I've been going through this like kind of mini identity crisis lately of, I've been telling myself, I'd love to take like a six month sabbatical, to do just personal work, no client work, but acting out of fear. I'm terrified that if I do that, I'm going to lose all of my clients and you know, I'm going to become irrelevant. People are gonna, you know, forget about me. And so it's something that I know I want to do is, what would it look like to just do fun work? And just, you know, like you said, is it is that pure fulfillment? Would it be amazing to just be able to do that, like if I won the lottery and I could make whatever I wanted? How would that feel if I just saved up and just planned A bit for like, that's what my sabbatical is going to be. I know sagmeister takes like a year off every five or seven years,
AD: I think. Yeah. And I was just talking with Lisa Congdon yesterday, she's planning on taking a sabbatical. And it's becoming a popular idea amongst creatives. And I think there's something really powerful about that because the more people who do take sabbaticals, the more accepted it becomes, clients start to get familiar with the idea. You don't lose relevance, you just they understand that you're just sort of taking care of your creativity,
LH: You're setting expectations, I think there's a way to do it and where it's not going to implode, and I also think that okay, you can't be running on you know, going at full speed always and I think this is a message to my just as much to myself as it is everyone else. When you try to think about yourself taking a sabbatical. All you can think about are the short term losses of like, here's the revenue I'm going to lose here the connections I'm going to lose. But what if that like six months or a year off paid dividends tenfold over the next five years after that.
AD: I mean, I feel like you got to think about it like gas, you wouldn't say I'm not gonna drive anywhere because I don't want to spend the gas.
LH: Every time you're doing client work, you're spending gas. And you got to refill that tank and everyone recharges differently. Like I think a lot of us creative people do thrive off of the like hustle and bustle of the entrepreneurial or creative life. But you do need to take a break sometimes, like, I have to charge my phone every night like I have to think about myself.
AD: You charge your home every night
LH: You got to refuel. Also, one thing I've been trying to do more lately, too is not just from a production standpoint, but from a consumption standpoint. I listened to so many podcasts I watched so many online courses I read so many books and bits of advice here and there. I got to this point where I started feeling overwhelmed by all the like all of this good information coming in. Yeah, but I realized I had to give myself time to digest. You need to you know, continue But also like give it a little time to like settle, because it's really not useful unless you take action on said advice or implemented. And sometimes yes, you need to hear it like five or six times before you actually take action. So listening to it is beneficial. But for anyone who's feeling overwhelmed by consuming advice or following people online, and then it's stifling your production. Take a little breather. No one says you have to be consuming all the time. We just naturally do it because we open our phones every day. I'm guilty too. So don't worry.
AD: Well, that is really good advice. Before we let you go, will you tell us a project that we can follow that we can take a look at look at or something new coming out?
LH: So two years ago, my silly passion projects started to find this intersection. It just naturally happened. Because I was trying to make things for my audience and I was teaching but I also love that silliness and that playfulness. I started a weekly creative challenge called Homwork. I got so lucky with my last name, I know where I realized that a big barrier to entry for a lot of people to start lettering or start illustrating or designing was, I don't know what to draw, I don't know what to letter like. And that stopping me staring at a blank page can be really intimidating. So every Friday morning at 7am, for the last two years, I've been sending out an email that has a creative brief in it for you. And it's an insightful, creative brief. It's not just like draw something green or like, you know, grass. I like those little those little word challenges, but it's a little bit juicier, where I'll tell a little bit of a personal story and say, Okay, if your life was if the last year of your life was a book, what would it be titled and illustrate the book cover? So things that are a little bit more creative, that's where my ad brain starts to come in. So that's a project that's going on right now that people can sign up for. There are almost 30,000 people signed up, which blows my mind. And thousands of people do the challenge every week and it's just really cool to see it come together. So that's what's going on now. So kind of as a predecessor to what Homwork is, if people aren't quite comfortable coming up with their own ideas yet, about a year ago, I bought the domain name. What the fuck should I letter dot com? I also got WTF Should I letter in case I wasn't sure which one I wanted to use. But I'm starting a project called What the fuck should I letter if you do not know what the fuck to letter, you can go to the site and it generates different phrases for you that I and my team all wrote and they're all as the name would suggest super sassy or weird or they're not your average, like inspirational quotes. Let's just say that. So if you vibe with my style or want to be a little bit more out there, it'll be a lettering prompt generator and if you use the prompts, I also I also got the Instagram handle see forward thinking, I'm going to kind of build a little community around it. So my passion projects have are now this interesting intersection of silly but helpful.
AD: And community building. Yes, that sounds super fun. Okay, so where Do we go to find you obviously what the fuck should I letter dot com? Give us your your home URL your Instagram handle and anything else we should follow.
LH: Cool so I am pretty much Hom Sweet Hom everywhere on the internet. On Twitter I'm Hom Tweet Hom. And yeah HomSweetHom.com I always say it's like home sweet home without the ease in home. And for anyone who is wondering, it is hom not home. But I will totally respond to home too because I know what my business name sounds like. And if you want to subscribe to the homwork challenge you can go to Homsweethom.com slash subscribe. Kept it pretty simple.
AD: Fantastic. Thank you so much. This has been really really fun. Lots of good takeaway information.
LH: I've heard that when I speak on podcast there are lots of little nuggets I'm a nugget girl
AD: you are nuggets crispy, crispy.
LH: I’ve been joking with people that my next design talk. I've never done this but maybe I should. My next design talk is just going to be All about these creative nuggets of advice but lettered in guess.
AD: Yeah, I wanted on one of those plates with different compartments.
LH: Oh, my gosh, you do like one of those plates for like five years.
AD: I love it.
LH: Yeah, I can do that.
AD: Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And thanks to Adobe and Airstream for hosting us to see images of Lauren's work and read the show notes. Click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app or go to cleverpodcast.Com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. If you haven't already. Please subscribe to clever on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and if you would please do us a favor and rate and review it really does help a lot. We also love it when you reach out to us on Twitter Instagram and Facebook. You can find us at clever podcast you can find me at Amy Devers clever is produced By to 2VDE media with editing by Rich Strafollino and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.
Thanks to Adobe MAX for hosting us in the Airstream podcast lounge.
Many thanks to this episode’s sponsor:
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Part of Lauren’s Flower Crowns project.
What is your earliest memory?
I think it was my second birthday party. My parents got me a cake with Belle from Beauty and the Beast on it. I don’t remember this part, but apparently I specifically wanted a slice that had one of her eyes on it haha.
What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?
When I REALLY wanted to quit my advertising job to pursue lettering full-time but thought I should wait 4 more months to have at least 1 year of employment on my resume, my friend Justin Gignac told me something along the lines of, “If you don’t want to work in advertising anymore, your advertising resume doesn’t really matter.” I had a light bulb moment, and then I put in my two weeks. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if I stayed, but the advice empowered me to ignore the “shoulds” and kickstart my own dreams.
How do you record your ideas?
Spread over 100’s of documents in the ‘Notes’ app on my phone haha.
What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?
I’m OBSESSED with making pom poms out of yarn right now.
What book is on your nightstand?
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
Why is authenticity in design important?
For me, it’s important because it makes the creative process so much simpler. When I create authentic designs that reflect a part of my authentic self, the process is fun. The sharing is easy. The question of “Is it good enough?” melts away because I know that I am good enough, therefore it is too.
Favorite restaurant in your city?
Lately, it’s been Ima in Midtown Detroit. Order the spicy fried tofu sandwich!
What might we find on your desk right now?
Post-it notes with my to-do lists on them, a bunch of pom poms, and the peel from a grapefruit I just ate.
Who do you look up to and why?
So many people for so many reasons, but particularly my grandma for her charming mix of being both fiercely intelligent and absolute silly.
What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?
Probably still Daily Dishonesty (the very first big personal project I published online) because I made it for fun and didn’t know it was going to kickstart my career. It was just so...pure haha.
Image Credit: Bridget Badore
What are the last five songs you listened to?
“Hold Me Down” - Motion City Soundtrack
“Jamie All Over” - Mayday Parade
“There’s a Class for This” - Cute is What We Aim For
“Chicago is So Two Years Ago” - Fall Out Boy
“A Decade Under the Influence” - Taking Back Sunday
(I was listening to my pop punk/emo playlist!)
Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Music in this episode courtesy of El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.
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