More Than Graphic Design: Art with Vanessa Callari
Vanessa Callari is a 29-year-old graphic designer and artist from the Philippines, currently living in Abilene, Texas. She’s one of those friends I’ve looked up to as a woman who seems to know exactly who she is, and who meets difficulties in life with a kind of calm determination I don’t always see in my peer group. (That might not be what she would say about herself, but as you’ll see in our conversation, she does thrive on problem-solving!) When Vanessa opened up to me about her journey as a creative professional, in some ways I wasn’t surprised to hear how she’s been consciously, actively, and intelligently attacking the problem of creative stagnancy and burnout. She’s found some great resources and gained useful insight that I can’t wait for you to check out below!
How did you fall in love with art?
I’ve always loved art. My parents had this folder of my drawings that they kept over the years, and they will both say I was never without paper and something to draw with as a child. I was constantly, constantly drawing. That hobby grew exponentially when I was in third grade and my best friend introduced me to anime. I fell in love with that and was always drawing my own cartoons and just trying to get better.
What made you choose graphic design rather than the more traditional art route when you went to college?
Well, I think there’s a twofold answer. In high school I discovered I enjoyed drawing and illustrating for school events, and I can distinctly remember telling myself, “Wow, it would be really cool if someone would pay me to do this.” When I finished high school and tried to pick a degree, I knew I wanted to pursue art because it was the one thing that I really enjoyed. I was blessed to have parents who were not like my other friends’ parents who were really pushing their kids to get a medical degree so they could try to get work outside the Philippines. But I also knew that I didn’t want to be a starving artist. I knew that there’s not a lot of money to be had in studio art unless you’re really, really good or you just work at that forever and hope that one day you get a break. So I wanted to be smart about it.
At the time, the university I was looking at only had studio art, interior design, and advertising. Advertising seemed to be the most practical thing to start out with (even though I wasn’t necessarily drawn to the marketing aspect) and I knew eventually I would come out of that with a more art-directed focus. So I started with advertising, then my second year I transferred to ACU, and ACU offered more degree options for graphic design specifically. So that first semester was my introduction to graphic design, and honestly, I think throughout my entire schooling career it was all just me learning about what graphic design was. It was a process of me trying to figure out, “Do I really want to be doing this? Am I actually good at this?”
I think one thing that kept me in it though was at ACU, when you are a graphic design major, you kind of have half studio work and half on the computer. So while I was learning Photoshop and so forth, I was still practicing studio art and still honing those skills. I got really good at figure drawing, at painting, all these things I already loved, and those were the only 8am classes I really looked forward to — being in the studio at 8am and being there all morning… it was great!
What do most people not know about graphic design or your personal creative process?
I think what most people don’t realize is that graphic designers aren’t just artists; we’re problem-solvers. In essence, whenever you come to a graphic designer with a need or a project, there’s a problem that needs to be solved. Whether it’s “I have a product I need to sell and I need to figure out how to communicate this to my audience,” or it’s “I have a brand and I want to communicate certain things about my brand to my audience. How do I do that in a captivating way?” You’re saying all that whenever you’re asking someone for a logo [laughs], and most people don’t realize that. We’ll often get clients who need something, and they think it’s simple. They think any solution will do… but that’s not true. If you really study different products and brands and visuals that people use to try to communicate a brand concept or idea, you’ll realize there’s a lot more to it than just, “Oh, this is something pretty.”
For my personal creative process… I need quiet. [laughs] That’s definitely a big one. I say quiet, but really just not having other things bothering me, because a lot of times when I work I do actually need some kind of music or something to take up the white noise. So there’s that, and a good chunk of uninterrupted time, whether that’s three or four or five hours, just having that amount of time to focus and not have anything else vying for my attention. That’s true whether I’m working on the computer for a client or if I’m working on a painting in my spare bedroom.
You’re one of the few artists in this collection whose day job involves one of your creative passions. Do you ever struggle to keep your “work creativity” and your “personal creativity” going at the same time?
I think I’m learning that the professional artist will have struggles in this area because our passion becomes our work, and as time goes on you get into this mindset of just getting something done for the sake of getting something done. You get in this cycle, especially if it’s something you have to do eight hours a day, five days a week, however many days a month. It can be exhausting and can drain your creative juices. It’s almost like you’re in overdrive as far as creating things (for clients, on a deadline), so you don’t have the luxury of time to just let ideas simmer. You have to come up with something really quick and then it just becomes robotic.
I’ve found it difficult to get out of that mindset when I come home. Even just on the weekends over the years it’s been difficult to find the motivation to do something creative, and a lot of the time it’s just because I’m tired and my brain wants to do something else. But then when I take the time to rest and I go to an art museum, I’m suddenly reminded, “Oh yeah, I used to make stuff like this, what happened?”
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That’s something I’ve been aware of over the years, kind of like a little voice in the back of my head all this time, so I’m learning and I’m seeing and I’m talking to others about how to change that. I’ve been actively talking to other creative professionals and they struggle with the same thing. We’re having to learn to make time to not do work and just do something creative and artsy for the sake of doing that, because if we don’t, we lose our passion, and then we’re not able to work at all. So that’s kind of a discipline I wasn’t fully aware of coming out of school, but I’m starting to try to communicate that to other artists or creative professionals.
On Instagram over the past six months especially, you’ve been posting things under the hashtag #yearofcreativehabits, and posting sketches or other things that relate to being intentional about your creative life as part of that “change” you mentioned above. What’s the story behind that?
Early last year I realized that I needed to do something different. I had forgotten what it felt like to just sit down and draw… I literally had not done that in years. I remembered in school doing a project — someone online would send out a word that would be a prompt for artists. Our professor decided to let the whole class try this out and the word was “subtract.” We could draw whatever we wanted to, whatever came to our minds. I drew this woman, and there’s wind blowing and her wig gets blown off, her earring gets blown off, her fake eyelashes get blown off, and it’s one of my best illustrations coming out of college.
I wanted to find something like that exercise online, so I think I literally Googled “creative habits” and found this Year of Creative Habits blog that a lady started because she was trying to do the exact same thing I was doing. I got on her mailing list and I participate on Instagram as much as I can. It’s been a really good start for me. I haven’t been able to stick to it as faithfully as I would like, but it’s definitely been a great way to get out of that hole and start creating again.
What helps you recharge your creative batteries?
I really enjoy scrapbooking, and that’s a hobby I’ve had for a long time, almost as long as I’ve been drawing. There are a lot of rules in graphic design and I like to just throw all that out the window when I’m working on my scrapbook. Most people would probably consider them very nice-looking and well put-together, but from a designer’s perspective, they’re not the most cohesive pieces of work. [laughs] Honestly, I don’t care — it’s more just about creating things that look pretty and putting my pictures together… so that’s something that I do specifically to get out of the mindset of trying to make things look “marketable.”
Then of course, I do enjoy going to art museums and seeing what other people do. Watching things on TV about art are also very enriching. Continuing education is really important as an artist and it’s a little difficult to figure out how to do that if you don’t know where to start. There’s lots of different resources… Pinterest was something that I was on for a long time, just seeing other types of work and finding inspiration there.
What always gets you excited about your craft?
For graphic design specifically, I do enjoy the problem-solving process. There’s a lot of bad design out there. [laughs] While I don’t consider myself an expert yet, I know enough to know when I see something that’s not well-designed, and the industry that I work in is one that’s somewhat behind in the times as far as good design is concerned. So I do enjoy helping in that respect — my personality is one that enjoys helping others, so if I’m able to help solve a problem with a talent that I specifically have, then that gives me a lot of fulfillment and purpose in my work. I certainly am much more excited when I get to do something that shows the broader range of art skills that I have, too.
What is a daily (or regular) discipline you’re following right now, related or unrelated to art?
Taking time away from a screen. I spend seven hours looking at a screen and I would imagine that’s not going to be good for my eyes in the long run. So I do that, come home, I don’t pick up my tablet, I don’t turn on the TV, and I definitely don’t open my laptop. Because of how much work I do during the day, I try not to do anything related to that when I’m home so my brain has time to rest and because I know I’ll work so much better the next day if my eyes and brain are rested from that mode of thinking.
Then there’s just being able to quiet things in my mind, being able to enter that time of relaxing and focus on other things that maybe I wasn’t able to think about during the day, like spending time with Caleb [her husband] or doing things around the house… maybe catching up with friends or just doing things for myself. I think that’s important for me both as an artist and as a person.
Even if you never “succeeded” in your craft, what would keep you creating anyways?
It’s just how I express myself and it’s what I enjoy. It’s so much a part of me that I don’t think it’s something that can ever be fully taken away from me or something that I can lose completely. It’s certainly not something that’s driven by success — I’m not an artist because of how successful I am at what I do, it’s just who I am. So I think my appreciation for it and love for it and the joy that I get out of doing it is enough to motivate me to continue being an artist.
In what ways have you improved over the past few years? What do you still struggle with?
I know that as a designer, it’s not as difficult for me to get started on certain types of projects and there are very few things that intimidate me in that area. When I was fresh out of school or even just a few years out of school, the proposition of designing a large publication was very intimidating, and now that I’ve done it a few times it’s not that big a deal. I’m more confident as a designer and in my own abilities to accomplish certain things.
Definitely still struggling with how to continue growing and stretching myself and doing things that I’ve never tried. I actually made a list last week of certain types of art projects that I’ve never attempted, and I was surprised to realize how many things were on the list and how many of those things I’ve been wanting to do even before I started art school. So it’s about time to try them! [chuckles] I never really spent a lot of time drawing or sketching or painting animals — that’s just never been particularly fascinating to me, even though I love animals, people have just fascinated me more. So I think that would be a really good thing to try and I’m never going to know if I’m good at it if I don’t try.
So yeah, just the continuing education and continuing to see what I can do and having to rely on self-motivation to do that. [laughs] That’s difficult.
What are your creative goals right now?
Right now I have a book that I’m going through, Creative Strength Training. It’s one of the books that was recommended on that blog I’m following, and they’re doing it for their book club. I’m going through it as much as I can and as faithfully as I can. Also attempting some of the projects that were on the list I mentioned earlier, and I have a space now in our spare bedroom for working on my scrapbooks — I have everything out, they’re no longer just inside a box, so I don’t have any excuses to not work on a few pages here and there. I think that will help with days when I don’t feel as motivated. If it’s all right there, why not?
Are there any tools, books, or other resources you would recommend to others starting out in art or graphic design?
Definitely the blog I follow, Year of Creative Habits. If you sign up for the newsletters she sends out, at the bottom of it she will include links to different types of articles that may or may not be inspirational or educational. I’ve used those as a source of continuing education as well as just idea-exploring or learning about other artists, so that’s really helpful.
Keep a notebook or sketchbook, something small and easy to carry around. This was a habit I used to have and have lost and am trying to pick back up again. If you’re on the go, that’s always good to have on you because you never know when you’ll come across an idea, or something, or someone, and something about it catches your attention… then you can write it down or sketch it, so you’re always in this constant mode of collecting ideas. I think that’s a good discipline for anyone practicing any kind of art form.
What other advice or words of encouragement would you give to other creators in your field?
There’s always room for growth and you’re not going to get there unless you try. I think the fear of failure can cripple a lot of creatives, a lot of people really — there are so many things that fear can take away from us. And I think in an almost passion-driven field, fear can be that much more powerful. So I would encourage other artists to just try. Just keep trying. It doesn’t matter if you come across a bad idea, a great idea, a life-changing idea… you’re never even going to get to a bad idea unless you try, so keep trying.
