28 Days of the Web: An interview with Monique Steele, In-House Designer at blipshift
We’re sponsors of 28 Days of the Web, a project that recognizes black designers, developers and creatives in celebration of Black History Month. In this interview we meet honoree, Monique Steele.
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Transcript
Jenn: Hi, I’m Jenn Schiffer. I’m the Community Engineer at Glitch.com, the friendly community where you’ll build the app of your dreams. And part of our mission is enabling creators, so we’re sponsoring 28 Days of the Web, which showcases through the month of February different black designers and developers in conjunction with Black History Month. And today, I am talking to Monique Steele.
Monique: Hi.
Jenn: You’re a designer.
Monique: Yes.
Jenn: What are you currently doing now?
Monique: Right now I do t-shirt design for a car enthusiast t-shirt company called blipshift.
Jenn: Oh interesting. What is the sort of model of that site? Does it sell like a shirt every day?
Monique: They sell a shirt a day and normally on weekends we have a two-pack so you do that. The t-shirt a day is a limited offer and kind of one of a kind shirts ’cause once you miss it that’s it. They never resell the same shirt twice. That’s kind of their thing.
Jenn: You draw a lot of cars.
Monique: I do. I do.
Jenn: Are you a car enthusiast yourself? Or did you become one through this job?
Monique: Not really. I learned more about cars through doing this job. I was very lucky that they were like ‘it’s cool that you don’t know about cars, we’ll teach you’.
Jenn: How long have you been working there?
Monique: I think is my third year now.
Jenn: Okay. That’s a lot of cars.
Monique: That’s a lot of cars.
“My love for drawing was born out of fan art essentially. Trying to represent the things that I saw and enjoyed”
Jenn: Are you the only one designing t-shirts there?
Monique: Their model, the way its set up is they also get people who send in their own designs or their own ideas for designs so it’s very much a community built in with Blipshift so the people who buy from us are also the people who are like, “I have an idea for something that would be cool.” And normally they have an idea but they can’t make the art themselves is when I jump in. That’s normally how that works out.
Jenn: What were you doing before that? You were an illustration fellow at Buzzfeed. It looks like you did some writing at MTV.
Monique: Yes. I think I had maybe three months leeway in between the time of working at Buzzfeed and then getting MTV and then Blipshift. Illustration-fellow-wise at Buzzfeed it was a lot of creating art for the internet, which is very different from doing car related art. It’s basically keeping in touch with what’s going on in social atmosphere.
Jenn: Which is really hard to do.
Monique: It is pretty overwhelming. Being a fellow on Buzzfeed was, there’s a new thing happening every single day that you have to be on top of. When I was there that was around the time that One Direction, Zayn left One Direction.
Jenn: Oh gosh. Trying times.
Monique: It was like a big day. It was a big day in the Buzzfeed office and so we were all scrambling like, “Let’s make something funny about this.” Things like that at Buzzfeed is so, so different from the work structure at Blipshift now.
Jenn: Buzzfeed is, the people who work there are always really interesting in their work in that they’re almost like trolls. Like, “Yeah, let’s do something funny about Zayn leaving One Direction.” That was a really sore topic for a lot of young girls.
Monique: I am a self-proclaimed Directioner. I’m not going to lie. And so when it happened, even though I was really upset because Zayn leaving the band it’s like, “Oh no, what’s going to happen,” I did make a very, I thought it was funny, a very funny book cover based on the Lemony Snicket ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’ and like changed the cover of the Bad Beginning to just be Zayn missing. Doing like little things like that where it’s like, “Oh no guys, we’re all sad but we’re laughing to keep from crying. It’s okay.”
Jenn: That’s great. And then you did some writing at MTV.
Monique: Yes. At MTV it was mostly writing. I don’t think I did any artwork for them. That was like a weekend writer position and that was born out of being at Buzzfeed because I did write for them sometimes.
Jenn: Okay. Have you always done writing or did you just get into that through your fellowship?
Monique: Not writing for the internet. It’s something that I’ve always been interested in and granted I think Buzzfeed was my first big job outside of college so that was a first time experience doing it professionally in any way, shape or form so I was really happy to do it because it was something with then, things I was interested in but also very different from anything I’d done before. It felt like a natural progression to do it but yeah.
Jenn: When did you first get into doing illustration design?
Monique: I mean it sounds a little cheesy but, I always drew. As a kid my Mom used to get me tracing paper and I’d have this big book of nursery rhymes that had really pretty drawings and I tried to copy every single drawing. I used to watch Dragonball Z a lot growing up and I tried to draw Goku all the time. Things like that. I think my love for drawing was born out of fan art essentially. Trying to represent the things that I saw and enjoyed.
Jenn: It’s interesting mentioning like fairy tales and Goku. A lot of the memes that I see coming out are all about the things we were inspired by when we were younger. A lot of Dragonball Z, Disney princess stuff. Anything that has been recreated with Disney princess is thanks to Buzzfeed.
Monique: It’s true. It’s true.
Jenn: What were your earlier inspirations?
Monique: Early inspirations I think Disney is a big one. A lot of Sailor Moon. So much Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon and Pokemon definitely. I think things that I saw on television so Kim Possible and things like that. Also, Harry Potter is a big one.
Jenn: One Direction, Lemony Snicket.
Monique: One Direction. Always in my heart. Always close to my heart. But seeing things that, things I would see often on TV and things like that or books that I would read always played a huge part in what I wanted to draw because I was basically trying to be a part of that universe that I saw represented.
Jenn: And did you go to school for design?
Monique: I did. I went to Ringling College for Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. Shout out.
Jenn: Are you originally from Florida?
Monique: I’m actually from Jamaica but I moved to Miami when I was 12 years old so yeah.
Jenn: How would you describe your illustrations and work outside of your job?
Monique: Oh, I would say it’s been changing a lot lately. I think earlier on when I first started maybe at Buzzfeed and things like that it was a lot more built around the idea of making patterns or putting a lot of patterns on clothing, which still is representative in things I’m doing now but I think now I’m trying to focus on things that are interesting to me as opposed to things that are interesting for the internet. I think when I was at Buzzfeed I was trying to do more like, “Hey, wouldn’t this be funny? Don’t you guys love One Direction.”
Jenn: Yeah, trying to be viral.
Monique: I think I was trying to do more things like that and that’s reflected in the fact this was at Buzzfeed and that was the mentality that we were thinking about all the items I was in that frame of mind. I think now I’m trying to focus more on things, “Hey, that was fascinating to me.” I did like an entire series based on historical women who kill.
Jenn: Yeah, what was it called? Killer Queens.
Monique: It was so much fun. I really like history a lot and I was in a spot when I started working on them where I couldn’t really draw anything that I felt connected to or happy with so I was trying to focus on, “You know, this is a topic that I find fascinating to look up, so I’m going to just draw it,” kind of thing and that was based on, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Rejected Princesses?
Jenn: Yeah.
Monique: I was reading a lot of the Rejected Princesses stuff and there is this British author who did this series called Rotten Royals, Terry Deary, and his stuff, it’s like really funny kids books but about the naughty, I don’t know-
Jenn: Femme fatales.
Monique: The terrible things that royals did back in the day. I was playing off of that and the things that, you know what, I really like looking this stuff up and also I like doing patterning and big fabulous costumes so marrying those two interests together to make something.
Jenn: You have made quite a bit of fan art.
Monique: I did.
Jenn: One series I saw where you made paper dolls inspired by the show Jane the Virgin.
Monique: Yes. I’m so proud of that because I ended up meeting the cast and I got to give them the paper dolls and it was so great.
Jenn: That’s so awesome. How did that happen?
Monique: They do a series here called Vulture. Do you know Vulture?
Jenn: Yeah.
Monique: They do a TV talk type series every year and they have a bunch of different TV shows come in and one of the shows the year that I went was Jane the Virgin and I had already made the paper dolls at that point and it kind of got a little attraction because the writing room saw it and they were like, “Oh, I love it.” And so I was on a high from making it. I was like, “I can’t believe it. The writers saw it. It’s so great.” And so because I was going to this thing I was like, “You know what, I’m going to shoot my shot. I’m going to bring it with me.”
I printed them out and I got to bring them with me and they had a section at the end where they ask questions and I made friends with some of the girls who were in the back row with me and they were hyping me up. Like, “No, no, you need to show them what you did.” When they asked for questions I raised my hand and I was like, “Can I give you my fan art?” It was great. And I got to meet Gina Rodriguez who was the star of the show. She was like, “Oh, I love it. This is great. Thank you.”
“I’m interested in putting more people of color in the narrative again”
Jenn: Are there any other series that you’ve done on the side?
Monique: I don’t have any now. I’m working on them now to do some more because I had so much fun doing that. I’m working currently on a series I call Black Fantasy ’cause there’s like this common trope on the internet that when things happen in fantasy worlds and they lack people of color the argument tends to be, “Yeah, but it’s not historically accurate to put people of color in this book.”
Jenn: Oh, historically accurate science fiction. Oh yes.
Monique: You know how it goes. One of the things that I wanted to work on is putting atypical fantasy characters but make them all people of color. I have a list of them that I want to do. I want to do a witch and a vampire and all those typical fantasy horror monsters and things like that but make them all black people.
Jenn: Yeah.
Monique: Just because I’m interested in putting more people of color in the narrative again. That’s another thing recently I’ve been focusing in on and it might be inspired by the fact that we’re in this time period right now where we’re looking at representation and remembering that and thinking of my own experiences growing up and not necessarily seeing people who look like me in the things that I enjoyed. ’Cause like I said Disney princesses and cartoons and things like that, not really a lot of people of color were in those things. Now that I’m trying to draw more things that are interesting to me I want to see more people who look like me in those things.
Jenn: Yeah, totally understandable. I guess like a lot of just besides being racist, a lot of people in charge of creating the products that are not showing that representation, they’re just like, “Oh, well, it won’t sell. It won’t sell.” It’s very obvious that it does sell.
Monique: And when it does happen. You get people clamouring to see it.
Jenn: Exactly. What is your dream project like?
Monique: Dream project. I really want to write my own graphic novel so bad.
Jenn: What’s keeping you from doing that?
Monique: My own laziness probably. That’s about it. I do want to try, it’s such an intimidating thing to say I want to try to do because it feels like such a big project.
Jenn: ’Cause you have it in your mind already, the final product, and you’re like, “Wait, how do you get to there?”
Monique: I know what I want but the actual making it is like, “Oh, wait.” I don’t know, like I think it’s a matter of I have to sit down and figure out the full script and the full layout and all that stuff. There’s just so many steps that I get overwhelmed and intimidated. I’m like, “I could just draw this one picture.”
Jenn: Yeah.
Monique: Done with that you know.
Jenn: I do one cell a day. It’ll only take me 500 days to do this.
Monique: Yeah. Exactly. There’s nothing stopping me but my own laziness. I don’t want to work on it.
Jenn: Also I don’t even think of it as laziness, I think it’s just like life gets in the way.
Monique: True, true. Because I do work full-time and so whenever I work on personal projects it’s always just at night at home when I get back from work. I leave work to work again and sometimes I’m just like, “Oh, I can’t. I’m just so tired.”
“The best things that I’ve ever made have always been things that I truly, truly enjoyed”
Jenn: Do you see yourself working on the graphic novel accidentally working car content into it just because it’s so part of your day job.
Monique: It is so possible.
Jenn: Where’d that Miata come from?
Monique: It is 100% possible. I can see it going either way. Where it’s just subconsciously slips in there or I work super hard to not put any cars in there and people reading it are like, “What kind of universe is this? No one drives.”
Jenn: It’s futuristic. There’s no driving. Yep, that would be ideal.
Monique: They just teleport wherever they need to go. That would be great. I wish.
Jenn: That would be great. But still like old royal clothing.
Monique: I just mix everything that I ever thought of in life just into this one comic.
Jenn: We go through these waves of nostalgia where bell bottoms are kind of coming back again and now high waist jeans instead of low rise, although low rise are starting to come back again. When is like old Victorian royal clothing going to come back? That would be interesting.
Monique: We’re going to get those ruffle collars in soon.
Jenn: Yeah. There you go. What kind of advice would you give to aspiring artists and creators out there?
Monique: I would say draw what you love. I think the best things that I’ve ever made have always been things that I truly, truly enjoyed the thing and not necessarily the things I thought I had to make. When I was in school I felt very much like there’s a certain way that I had to draw or a certain thing I had to draw to get serious attention and I think through being at places like Buzzfeed and MTV and things like that I got more comfortable with just drawing things that could be silly or just things that I like. It’s okay if you like a really dorky thing like One Direction. It’s fine. Just draw anything what makes you happy. Because I think you’ll feel more satisfied. The art itself will probably look better because you care so much about it and honestly people who like it will flock towards it. That’s, at the end of the day that’s all that matters.
Jenn: Thank you so much for coming.
Monique: Thank you. It’s been fun.
Jenn: I look forward to seeing more of your art, especially on Instagram.
Monique: Yeah. That’s where it’s at.
Jenn: Yeah.
