rent apartment new orleans

♪ [funky soul] ♪ thanks for joining us and without further ado, jessica hisch. i re-outfitted myself in the git hub bathroom. so, thank you soniafor providing such a lovely dress for free for people to wear. and also [everyone laughing]

i think not actuallyfor people to wear, for her to wear on fancy fridays. but i washed in the bathroom, and they were like, "thebathroom's great." walked into the second stall, and there's all those crazy things about condoms and babies, and ryan gosling. and then i walked out and immediately saw this sparkly dress

in front of me and i was like, "got to put that on!' and then, every color of eyeshadow is also available here for you to wear, so, anybody that has access to the ladies' restroom, and wants to have crazy eyeshadow on, that's a thing you could be doing. [audience laughing]

so, i do a lot of public speaking, so i don't want this talk to be too talky, because i like that it's all nice and casual, and we can have conversations afterwards, but, i love the idea of talking about passion projects since i'm a such a major "problem-haver" of passion projects, almost.

i am sort of compulsively always working on things that i feel like working on instead of what i should be working on, but i always find time for the things i should be working on. so, anyway, i'll just begin by talking about "procrastiworking" in general, which is kind of a term that i ended up coming up with

as the umbrella thing for the work that i do when i shouldbe doing other work. and, it's funny because my friendmig is here from chicago, who just happened to be in town, and i sort of first was able to understand this whole side work passionnonsense that i end up doing, because of a video series that he wasdoing as a passion project on the side. so, he had this project called, "humble pied,"

which is still up and about, though, not actively added to, i think, at this point, in which he just asked people there's all sorts of blogs that do this now, but this was just 2009, so, early on that asked you, "if you could give one piece of advice to people,

what would it be?" and, my piece of advice was, "the work you do whileyou procrastinate is the work you should be doing for the rest of your life." and of course, like anything that you write down, or tell people, or post to the internet, it was taken in everywhich wrong way,

so i had a bunch ofa-holes on twitter being like, "so i should just masturbate and play goldeneye forthe rest of my life?" [audience laughs] which is, of course, like every single thingyou ever write online, people misread in every whatway, read however they want. but, i tried to keep it light. my response was, "if youget paid to masturbate,

you should absolutely do thatfor the rest of your life." because, why not? i feel likethere's a whole field called, "being paid to masturbate,"or "pornography," or something like that. [procrastiworking] but anyway, this whole ideaof working on the things that you want to be workingon isn't a unique idea. it's just one of those thingsthat sounds really selfish, until you have better understanding

about what it is. to think about always working on thething you want to be working on or when you have thatfeeling in your gut like, "this is what i have to do right now, because if don't work on it, it's like creative food-poisoning, and i have to just get it out. and if i don't get it out, i'm goingto sit here all day and have a sour stomach about it.

it's just, a lot of people can't grasp it because they have really normal jobs. we don't have normal jobs. i would imagine that being at github is not a normal job. you guys have dressesin your bathroom. but i was always kindof a "procrastiworker." and that's why, you know, i, i and please, all shitty talksstart with a photo

of the speaker as a child. so, i'm prefacing thiswon't be up long. but as a, [laughs] as a kid even, i always sort of knewwhat i wanted to do because i never had anotherthing that i wanted to do. i would draw for like eightor ten hours a day, and my brother wasa complete hellion when we were little kids. but i was super easy.

i would just be in the corner. you'd pump me full of art supplies, i'm good to go. so when i was in school, thankfully i didn't meet any resistance from my parents when it came to doing art stuff. they just pumped me full of art supplies and let me to do what i wanted to do.

i didn't get any majorfeedback of like, "you shouldn't go to art school becauseno one gets jobs out of art school." because they had to dealwith my brother. [chuckle] so it was easy [laugh]. [some laughter from the audience] but i started to sort of see in the work that i was doing, the stuff that i was focusing on, and the stuff that i felt that iwas more passionate about,

and more interested in. so when i was in art school, so this was just some drawings from my freshman year of college. i have really loved to draw shiny things with a number two h pencil. i don't know, it was a thing. i also sort of can't draw. i hold a pencillike a five-year-old holds a crayon. i get nail marks in my palm

from holding it too tight, and i get tennis elbowlike nobody's business, so i mostly work on a computer. the computer has been my "art savior." but when i was a sophomore, i went to tyler school of art and they sort of encourage youto take a ton of electives. you can't actually declare your major until the end of your sophomore year,

at the school that i went to. so freshman year was all foundation art, sophomore year was alljust experimental stuff. but i found out that i always thoughtthat i was going to be an artist. i went to school to draw. that's what i went to school for. but then i took a graphic design class, and i found myself procrastinating from all of my fine art to work

to work on my graphic design projects. and, of course, when you're a sophomore and you're taking graphic design, all your fine art friends that are doing performance art naked, covered in jelly, they're all like, "what a sellout!" [audience and jessica laughing] [stifled laughter] so, at the time,

i was like, "whatever. i want to be a sculptor too." but i couldn't ignore the fact that all i wanted to do was to do these design projects. so, i just threw myself headfirst into the design program, and ended up just lovingevery second of it. and i was that total asshole in school,

that did five posters instead of one because they were just really into it. and it took until my basically walkingdown the aisle, graduating for all of my classmates to realize that i wasn't just the word'smost intense brown-noser. i just really loved what i was doing. so when i graduated, i ended up working for louise fili, who runs a studio in new york,

that focuses on restaurantpackaging, and identity stuff. and before that, i was interningat a place in philly that did a bunch of illustration, and bookdesign, and stuff like that. so i really ending up fallingin love with illustration, and how the illustration world worked. all my friends in philadelphia wereillustrators, they were all cool. they all liked to just hang out. and then, louise fili offered me a job, because i randomly sent her aseries of postcards that i made.

and i freaked out, i had a meltdown. i didn't think i was goingto move to new york. i thought i was just going to hang outwith my illustrator friends in philly forever, because,unlike san fransisco, philadelphia is a freelancer's haven. it is amazing. everything is so cheap. there's no businesses, ever. [chuckle] i mean, there are, but not really. here, it's like every single person worksat a start-up. it's really funny.

during the day, it's like a fuckingghost town in this city. everybody's just either down here in soma, the mission is really just all onlyhomeless people during the day. but it's interesting to be here, and be in this field that isn'tthe "everything field." in brooklyn, everybody's a freelancer. everybody's just around all day. and in philly it was like that too, so moving to new york was a major changei didn't foresee happening

because i wanted to bea freelance illustrator like all of my friends were. but, it was while i worked for louise that i ended up sort of discovering all this hand-lettering stuff, and it was what i was reallypassionate about. i did a lot of lettering in school, but i didn't really knowwhat it was about. i just sort of did it because i wastoo broke to buy fonts,

and [chuckles] that's whypeople do stuff sometimes, because they're broke and resourceful. and also, because, i don't know about you guys, but stealing is really hard. you have to actively do things to steal. that's why i just buy shit on itunes all the time because i'm too lazy. if i wasn't lazy i would probablysteal everything.

not now that i make real money, but as a broke student, i totally would've stolen everything. but i'm lazy, so i itunes things. so, anyway, while i was working for louise, because it was a really tiny studio, i ended up doing a lot of freelance work just to make ends meet.

whenever you are workingfor a small place, they usually pay you in thanks and lunch. so, i got paid well enough, but i was making like $34,000 a year living in new york city, which is not much when the non-cockroachy apartments start at $800 a month with roommates that are 35 and sexually-addicted [laughs] gay men [suppressed laughter]

that are really out and about. so, [laughs] so i was doingall this freelance work, and in doing that, i starteddiscovering the kind of stuff that i was really interested in doing too, because i loved graphic design, and i loved working for louise, but i really loved the interactionof being an illustrator, and working with creatives all the time, instead of working with the end client.

i noticed that a lot of the work that louise did, she was working with restauranteurs, and people that have never worked with designers before. and, if you're working with people that aren't used to working with designers, every single time thatwork with them,

it's like an educational process. you have to basically prove to them what your value is, and show them what you're good at every single time, versus when you're an illustrator, you'rehired to just kind of do your thing. you come in at that partof the project, you leave, and other people finish it up, which sounds really scary to people that are startupy that are like,

"i want to be there for the whole thing." "i got to see it through." but, as someone who cansort of like hand things off, and trust other creatives, it feels like a way to collaborate constantlywith other people. so while i was doing all this freelance illustration work, i ended up trying to incorporate

some of the lettering work,that i was doing while i worked for louise, into my freelance illustration work. so, the slide on the right is this. i got hired by, i forget evenwhat magazine it was now. but, it was an article about the teenage brain. i think it was harvard business review, or something,

which is an awesome magazine. and i just drew a bunch of teenage stuff in a brain environment. it was really fun, and i started to just incorporatemore and more of this hand-lettering into my illustration work. and the more people started seeing me do it,

the more started hiring me to do it. so that was sort of the first lesson that i ended up learning from doing all this freelance work, was like, "if you don't prove to people what you want to do, how are they going to know you want to do it?" so that's like one of the first reasons

why passion projects and side-projectssort of come about, because there's something that you want to be doing, but no one's paying you to do it right now. and you have to show them that you want to do it before people will pay you to do it. so lettering became sort of

my first passion project. it was the thing that i wanted to do, that i wasn't getting paid to do, and i had to show people that i was interested in it. so i started incorporating more and more lettering into my illustration work in order to get hired

to do more lettering work. and then, over time, the more people started seeing it, i got hired for it over and over again. people love to hire specialists in things because people love one-line bio's. who here spent more than three minutes thinking about what their twitter bio is? and it like defines you in some way

whether it's some stupid, silly thing, that means nothing, it's still a thing that defines you and who you are. and when people introduce you at a party,they introduce you by this bio, like, "oh, this is my friend." "she works at github." she does this, she hasa crazy dress in the bathroom."

that becomes your bio. forever sonia will be the crazy dress lady that works at github. so, to me at least. that's your one-line bio for me. so i started thinking about that,and that's really what matters when it comes to being a professionaland being a specialist. if you went to a party, what wouldpeople say to introduce you as? hopefully it's not, "remember that videoof that person running naked

across the, whatever?" you don'twant that to be your one-line bio. but, being like, "oh. she does lettering.she did this. blah bah blah." then, all of a sudden, next timethat someone else is at a party, and they're working on alogo project or something you get brought up as the personthat they know that does that thing. so, more and more, because letteringis such a niche thing, or at least was. now more and more people are doing it. i was the lettering personthat everyone knew, because i was just very friendly, and outand about, and went to a lot of shit,

and people started being like, "oh! jessica does that kind of stuff, i guess we could hire her." and over time, i mean, that's kindof how networking happens. people do networking and they go out, andthey're all weird, and businessy, and handing out business cards. if you've ever gone to a party andwitnessed someone actually trying to network, it's the most worstthing in the whole universe. if anyone is ever giving you more thanone copy of their business card, that is the worst thing ever. [suppressed laughter]

i've had people give me fivebusiness cards at once. i'm like, "why do i need five of these?i don't even need one. we've met, if you write me on twitter, we'll have metagain. that's how we contact each other. but, when you can sort of have networkingjust be you meeting people that you have similar interests, which we all do, then,all of a sudden, you get to have a presence within that community as aperson that does a specific thing. i know that for sure, at this companythere's people that are specifically good at one thing here, andwhenever you have a problem in that zone, you talkto that person first.

and that's sort of what happensin every single industry. so, i ended up being able to work for alot of really awesome clients including wes anderson, which was awesome. and, thatwas just totally a random recommendation from someone within their art team, because they were working withanother calligrapher that was like, "i'm not a calligrapher, i'm a letterer."so there's a weird difference between those things and no one knows it. i do [laughs] the difference is that calligraphers writeand letterers draw, which seems like

a completely weird thing to say, but you have a specific kindof handwriting in the way that you write, and you're reallygood at doing that handwriting. whether or not it looks good isup to everyone and yourself. but, you can replicate that wayof writing over and over again, and that's what calligraphers do. they master several styles of writing so that when someone calls upon them,and they say, "hey, we need you to do our invitations," they're like, "boom!"

[does impression of calligrapher working] and it's the same thing every single time,because they're super well-practiced, it's crazy muscle memory. theyknow what they are doing. letterers are kind of feeling aroundin the dark a lot of times. but, it's good, because the thing thatunites our work is the methods that we use to create it. so i work entirely in adobe illustratormostly, and then i use robo font when i make fonts. but it's all vector. all my work is vector and that's whatsort of unites the style of my work.

there's also other things thatunite the style of your work. i mean, if you drew an apple,and you drew an apple, you'd know whose apple it was. youknow. even though you're drawing the same subject matter,it looks unique to you, because your artist's hand is in it nomatter what. but, letterers can work in a lot of different styles,unlike calligraphers that usually master a few styles. so, this was a really awesome project.i could go in depth into it. i'm talking super fast to you. sorry.i'm--been biking around all day,

i'm wearing a sequin dress. but, even through my professional career,i started looking at what i was doing when i was procrastinating, and figuringout where my passions lie. so, i share a studio now in the missionwith another letterer. his name's erik marinovich. he's an awesome dude. he's way more awesome than i amin a lot of ways, and he's croatian, and is very friendly and huggy. but, the kind of work that he's doingnow, he does a lot of calligraphy

as well as lettering, and i feel like he's actually better at crazyillustrative lettering than i am at this point in my life, because i have sort of gone into this pathof being really interested in type design, which is a really differentway of thinking, and i find that i am now procrastinatingfrom my lettering projects by doing type design projects, so--whichsays something, and says i should probably focus on doing type design. but, it's one of those arts

that doesn't pay all that well,and people bitch about, and everyone wants to be like,"let's make an open-source font on github," which people havetold me about. [laughs] someone actually the other day wanted totake all of my daily drop caps and make them into css, and open-source it ongithub so other people could also make them. so that we can makethe whole thing faster. and i was like, "i'm licensing those rightnow to other people so we can not do that. but that's a noble idea." i love the open internet,and all this stuff,

and you guys are awesome, and everyone i know uses github. it'sgreat, so don't worry, you're cool. [heavy laughter] so, i love type design stuff right now,and i find myself procrastinating on a lot of my lettering workto work on type stuff, and it's just a very different way of thinking. instead of thinkingin kind of a more macro way, you think very micro. so it's all about these little minutechanges that you're making,

that affect it as a whole, insteadof looking at the full picture, like the painting of the final thing andthinking of the presence that that has. so, you're always zooming in from macroto micro, but it's so much more about these little tiny details. and it's also a lot of this, whichnot a lot of people know about. so, type design is a supercodey thing, sort of. opentype is gross and looks like that. but, one of the original founders of--oractually one of the first people that wrote python, his brother was atype designer, or is a type-designer.

they're both still alive. and so, all the type design programsactually use python as a secondary language, and people writeplugins. i took a type design course, and actually had to take a python workshopover the weekend to try and figure out how to start writing in python,which i'm not very good at. it's a language i have not mastered. but it's an interesting overlap betweenthe nerd word and my nerd world. [i love lettering & type ...but they don'tmake me 100% creatively satisfied.] so anyway, back to passion projecty stuff;

while i love lettering and type, it doesn't make me 100%creatively satisfied. so, there's a lot of reasons why peopleget into doing what they do. i love what i do for a living. there'snothing about it that i don't love, but i guess there is stuff aboutit that i don't love. [laughs] but, when you're constantly doing stufffor clients, it's really different than when you're doing stuff on your own, so i like to think of my day job, and my night job as the bruce wayneand batman situation.

so everyone has their own bruce wayne. you have your bruce wayne that is likean awesome dude, and bruce wayne runs a mansion and pays the bills, andhangs out with models. whatever. and then--but, you know, bruce wayne hada super awesome life and still didn't feel totally satisfied withhis super awesome life, so he made batman, and batman ishis fun work, his masked vigilante. so batman needs bruce wayne'sendless cash to fund his crime fighting side-project. so, we all have this situation wherewe have our bruce wayne,

and we have our batman, and many peoplewould try to tell you that you should be only batman, and that you should livewithout bruce wayne, because we should always be doing what welove forever, and who needs bruce wayne? you all need bruce wayne.we all need to pay the bills. we all need to be able to pay forall the things that we want to do when we're a crazy masked vigilante. so,i don't think it's wrong to want to want to do things to make moneyto support your side-projects, even if you have a totally shit job,in which you make money that pays for all the fun stuffthat you want to do.

you guys don't have shit jobsbecause you're here, which means that it's awesome. i knowthat not everyone that's here works at github, but, you know, you guys are probably all doingcool stuff. whatever. i'm assuming that. it's san fransisco. how can you live here andnot be doing cool stuff? but for me, being a letterer paysthe bills. it's still a super fun job. but being a maker of weird side projectsis my masked vigilante time. i get to do stuff that no one wantsto pay me to do, at least for now,

or stuff that maybe couldnever be profitable just because a lot of the things that i'minterested in are super niche stuff that no one gives a fuckabout except for me. and that's okay. it doesn't matter. [pays the bills: letterer; fun-work:maker of weird side-projects] it's interesting to be in this city where everyone is always thinking so bigall the time. everyone's always on this, "what's the next thing that's happening?i'm making a crazy start-up, and i already have 400 employees,"

and i'm like, "i'm going to make a websitein four hours." you know? [laughs] so, sometimes it's okay if your side-projectsaren't these massive game changers. because, no matter how much ofa game--you know. everything that you make will bea game changer for somebody. you know. it doesn'tneed to be the game changer for all of america, or all of the world.it'll be a game changer for somebody. there's a lot of times in my career wherei think the work that i do is stupid, or that i am just making decorative,stupid stuff all the time. but then i'll these really impassionedemails from people that will tell me

that like, "oh, my daughter's applying toart school, and i didn't think art school was the thing that she should do untilsuddenly she showed me her website. and, now i feel like she could have acareer and now she's going to art school. that's a fucking game changer!and i just do pretty making all the time, and you can still change people's liveeven if you're just doing pretty making. so, the whole batman-brucewayne thing--you know. for one thing you have to do side-projectseven if you're awesome and bruce wayne, and fucking models and being awesome,because it's nearly impossible to get all of your career happinessfrom client work alone,

or from your day job alone. there's always going to be shit that is wrong with your clientwork or your day job. someone is always going to a completeweirdo and ruining your life for a week, and you need a way to step away from it.and also, it's nearly impossible to work for 16 hours on one thingand not lose steam. so a big issue that a lot of people haveis like, "oh my god! how do you stay motivated to do freelance work atnight? how do you just keep going?" and the main thing is actuallyproject diversity.

so that's why google has that 20% rule. that's why a lot of people have work athome wednesdays or let you do these fun things at the office. because if you have diversity in the workthat you're doing, it doesn't feel like you're working one 16 hour day. it feelslike you're working three five-hour days. or 5.233, whatever that equates to. so for me, the way that my life kind ofbreaks down is, i do lettering, type design, illustration, web design,writing, and public speaking. not all of this pays the bills. a lot ofit is batman activity, but it all falls

somewhere on this conceptual thinkingto making production scale. and for me, i found that i like tojust make a lot more than i like to be in my own headand think all the time. so the actual conceptual thinking stuffonly takes up probably a third to a little over that of my time, and then mostof my time is spent making. and that's how i like to be, because i'm inmy moment. i'm zenned out if i can just sit there and make, andthat's why lettering and type design is so good for me. but if i only did that, then i wouldfeel like a hollow shell of a person.

i would be like bruce wayne,but only with the prostitutes. it would be not good. i don't know if any of this makes sense. it's the tea. i actually only had like half of a glassof that tea. i'm totally lying. stone sober right now. but, side-projects are great, and thesepassion projects are great, because it's this big cyclical motion.you do the side-projects, which get you totally amped about makingagain, and then, you go into the work

that you're getting paid to dowith a new sense of purpose, and then you see that throughin a more enthusiastic way than you would have if you didn't. andthen that pays the bills, which enables you to do the side-projects, andit just goes in circles like that, over and over again. so that's why i think it's always reallygood to have a lot of stuff on your plate. it's always good to be able to jumpbetween projects, and that's why procrastiworking is awesome. becauseyou get to work all the time, and always feel like you're being productive. you'renot masturbating when you're taking

a break from your project, you're workingon other stuff that's really fun and productive. so, these are all--all ofmy side-projects that i've ever done have been really practical. so daily dropcap i've made, because i quit working for louise and i wanted to be freelance, but iwasn't sure if i was going to be hired to do lettering all the time, so i decidedto make a project, that i had to do lettering every single day. and whatended up happening was that, i made the side-project as just anexercise for me to do lettering everyday, and because of it, all theseother projects that were lettering, came about from it.

so, i ended up doing this series withpenguin this year in which, i'm doing-- it's called penguin drop caps, and ido a letter for each author through the whole alphabet. so it's like austen,bronte, cather, dickens, and goes all the way though to z basedon the author's last name. it's awesome, a crazy undertaking, andi've read a lot of books this year. but it all came about because i decidedto do an exercise on my own time for like 30 minutes in the morning. andthen, a lot of my side-projects come about because people email me stuff all the timeso, "jessica, how do you feel about doing work on spec?"

there was this whole conversation aboutdoing spec work because google was trying to hire an artist to do work forfree for their chrome when they first launched chrome and itstarted this whole wildfire throughout the illustration community, andeveryone wanted everyone to comment. everyone needs to comment andwrite posts and blah, blah, blah. and instead of doing that,i made a website that was a flowchart that told you whether or not you should work for free. so i got to do some writing. i gotto be kind of irreverent and funny.

there's a cursing and a non-cursingversion, as you could imagine. it's nothing all that bad. just says, "make it rain bitches a coupleplaces, or something." [stifled laughter] but sometimes side-projects come aboutin this really natural way. i made the flowchart in like an hour anda half, and then just posted it online, as a .jpeg, and all the nerds were like,"oh my god! it takes so long to load!" so then i spent eleven hours handwritingit in css and html, and that's how it went up. now it looksall fucked up because they updated

the font, and it's a little funky,and i haven't fixed it yet. but, anyway, it was stupid reasonto do this really elaborate thing, but so many people saw this. it's hadlike a million and a quarter uniques since i launched it or something, whichis crazy for a flowchart about working. and because of it i've just gotten endlesspeople asking more advice on this kind of stuff. so it sort of spurned [sic]this whole part of my website in which i just write articles about pricing, writearticles about freelancing, write articles about interning, all that kind of stuff. and, this stuff is like--they say, "if youwant to be an expert, write a book,"

we don't have to write books any more. wejust write really elaborate blog posts. and then, all of a sudden,you're an expert. so, [laughs] boom! [laughs] so it's helped a great deal because,i think, in really outing a lot of this professional stuff, this insider info, theinsider info that all the insiders know but don't share all that much becausethey're afraid to expose what they actually charge for things, i ended up,having all that transparency had-- and i ended up having a lot of peopletrust my opinion more, want to hire me because they knew that i just was verystraightforward about the way that

i operated. and in the end, eventhough i was more transparent, and posting prices on here that a lotof people thought were outrageous that live in wichita, or something, i was still able to help a lot of people,and educate a lot of people, and hopefully the raise awareness of whatpeople should charge for all things. "what do people even use twitter for? it'slike facebook without pictures?" this was an honest question from my family. so, imade "mom this is how twitter works." [suppressed laughter] and, in theend, i--this has gotten--i've gotten so much feedback of people thatare seriously our age that are like,

"i learned that i was accidentally showingall of my secret conversations to people on twitter because i didn't knowwhat an add reply was." and, it's just narrative, and just showsyou twitter. it's just a stupid thing. i made it in like a day and a half. and, that's how all my sideprojects end up being. they're not these commitmentsfor eight months like, "make this total crazy thing," if i can't make something in a weekend,it probably doesn't get made. and that's just how i operate, becausei'm a sprinter, i'm not a marathon runner.

we were talking aboutthat a little earlier. but, that's unique tome, and that's why i can only do these, sortof, one-off websites, because anything that actually have tomaintain, i just drag my feet on, and have to hire my momto maintain it for me. will you send me that templateyou used for your website? a constant of any designer. so i made"don't fear the internet," which is a series of videos teaching people basichtml and css, which a professor at stanford told me heuses in his classes.

so, this shit's crazy. you're like, "i'mgoing to make that," and you make it, and then people start using it. it's wild! you guys know that. github's crazy like that. everybody'salways making stuff. and another big one, "you don't know me,but can you recommend a printer for my job that you know nothing about?" everyone assumes that if you're a designer you know all printers inthe entire universe. so i'll get emails from peoplein australia that are like,

"i want to make a business card. can yourecommend a printer?" and i'm like, "you live in perth, australia. idon't know any printers there." so i made this website, "inker linker," and just had a form that all printerscould sign up and just list their services, and that was it. andit was just a wordpress site. but now there's like 500,or 600 printers on there, and a lot of people use it as aresource. so, it's pretty cool. ["are there any classes or books you wouldrecommend to learn how to be a letter?"] none of these things willever make me money.

i pay my mom to maintainthis website for me. because i just have no desire to updatepeople's contact information on a website i will never make money on. see this ad in the corner there? that wasa link exchange with french paper, because they put me in their mailinglist blast once. so they're like, "we'll put an ad on your site.let's do an exchange." so that's how all these adthings work on these sites. it's really fun! or not. are there any classes or books you wouldrecommend to learn how to be a letterer?

just decided to some workshops.made a whole thing about it. and then--so, people come toyou and have these problems, and you can either do nothing aboutthem, and focus on your thing that no one's asking you about, oryou can do something with them, and usually they can be reallyfast, these workshops we just-- i started a studio with my frienderic, and we were like, "you know what would be awesome? ifwe didn't have to pay as much rent for our studio in san fransisco. so, let'shave workshops and subsidize our rent with these workshops. so sometimes there'sreally practical reasons for doing stuff.

my wedding website, which you can't reallysee that much on this screen, came about because i was getting married. that's a practical reason; tomake a wedding website. but it also came about because, as soon as we announced thatwe were getting engaged, every person on the internet was like,"oh my god! you're going to have the most beautiful weddingwebsite in the universe!" and i was like, "fuck everyone!" [audience laughing hysterically]

because, i was so freaked out! i was just like, "let's just elope.let's not do a wedding." and russ is like, "my mom is from thesouth. we can do that." [audience laughs hysterically] so, the whole time--my family's totallycrazy. i love them but they're completely insane. they're hyper-divorced.it's really intense. so i just wanted to runaway and get married, and then as soon as the internet was like,"oh my god! i bet your wedding invitation

is going to be the best in the wholeuniverse, and you'll be able to wear it-- [suppressed laughter] so i was like,"let's just do something really small. let's just get our friends to giveus some artwork. it'll be great!" and it ended up being this insanity,parallax website thing that then gawker shat on like crazy, whichwas really fun. and then they had to do a redaction because they got so many crazyhate mail from the people on the internet that are like, "jessica isawesome. shut up!" which is really rad. i was in to that. but--[laughs] and all my sideprojects are so dumb.

they're just these one-offthings. i made this website because i was tired of clients sending me manuscripts that had the accenttyped after the 'e' on cafã©, because no one knows how to type accentsor no one used theproper quotes, so i made a website, quotesandaccents.com that teaches you how to type the quotes. and then, this is the last project thati'll show you just because this was a total--sometimes i like makingjust silly, stupid stuff, and it's really fun, and it'sdelightful, and why not?

so i had this idea a while ago, that iwanted to make these certificates of awesomeness, to just give to peoplethat were doing awesome stuff. sometimes people write you reallynice things in the mail, or be like, "oh my god! i just totally made thiscake for my friend," and i'm like, "that's great. you deserve a certificate!" but i never made them, because theywould cost like $1,000,000,000 because, of course, the only way i could imaginethem happening in my mind was with 20 colors of holographic foil-- so i never made them. and, a few monthsago, a few of my friends were bitching

on twitter about how they didn't get intoone of those 20 under 30 competitions, and i was like, "thisis the perfect time!" so i made a website called, "thousandsunder 90," and then-- so, [suppressed laughter] if you thinkthat you deserve an award, you can give yourself an awardon thousands under 90. and the whole thing fills in yourinformation and says, "you're so awesome that they're going tochange your profession to githubbery, or something like that." andthere's no printed version. it just tells you to take ascreen grab of your thing.

and people are like, "you should do athing where it converts it into a .jpeg, and then i'm like, "no! it's afucking one-off website. just take a screen grab!" but it was sofun and i got so many people posting these on facebook that were friendsof mine, and then tagging me, and then all their friends didn'tget the joke. so they'd be like, "oh my god! congratulations!" [everyone laughing hysterically] which turned into like two or three daysof just all of us just laughing at everyone on the internet.it was really good.

but anyway, so there's so many differentreasons to procrastiwork, and to do these passion projects and whatnot but,you have to always be coming up with ways to keep learning, to teach otherpeople, because we forget how much we actually know. i mean, you guysprobably know how much you know because nerds are really good atknowing how much they know. but we forget that not everyone--you canblow people's minds. when we first made don't fear the internet, russ, he works atfacebook. he's a total web person. he was like talking about, "oh, we got to teach them how todo floats and responsive stuff."

and i'm like, "we've got to teach themhow not to make the links blue. it will blow their minds. believe me!" andso, we have this knowledge that really does blow a lot of people's minds, andjust coming up with ways to teach it to other people is a great wayto start passion projects. and, of course, to play because sometimesyou're stuck in a project at work or whatever and, you don't feel like you're really experimentingor playing anymore, just because you're atthat point in the project where you just have to see it through. soyou have to come up with new ways

to be able to play. so--and of course tofind your passion, because a lot of times, we don't really know exactly what it isthat we want yet, and it's only through experimenting and trying new thingsthat we actually figure that out. so, yeah. thank you, guys! [audience applauding] [github presents "passionprojects jessica hisch] what was your first computer moment? doyou remember the first time that you laid eyes on a computer or fellin love with a computer? it would be the gateway 2000.

[audience cheering] that my mom purchased in, ibelieve 1995, or '94, maybe. when she bought it, it camewith an unsolicited note from whoever had packed that, that was amean note about her being a rich bitch, [gasping] that some random person atthe computer store was just like, "fuck everybody that's buyingthese computers!" [julie] it's like a bad fortune cookie. it was like a bad fortune cookie in a cow-covered box. but that was my first, thatwas my first computer.

i was allowed to use the computerfor 15 minutes a day, because it was a long distancephone call to use the internet. we had to call--i'm fromhazelton, pennsylvania,-- and it had to call wilkes-barre. that wasthe only place that the internet happened so, that was 40 miles away, which atthe time, there was a thing called, "area codes," that peoplehad to deal with. - i learned this from ludacris, actually.- and so, it was very-- yeah, that's a nice, nice--allthe ho's and whatnot. but i loved it. we had all the aol disksthat anyone could ever ask for.

i wish i still had my original aol aimname but i have a new one. [julie ] i think we should try to findthose disks an make jewellery out of them. [jessica] i've seen people make showercurtains and all kinds of stuff out of them. but also, i, my whole hometown used mircas a chat line, which actually just turned into a giant pit of despair in highschool,because what happens is when teenagers have theinternet it's terrible. so, we had this chat room on mirc called,"the dungeon," which was controlled by a couple of very intense, self-centerednerds, and then a bunch of crazy, high-drinking football players.

and so, they-- [julie] they knew howto use the internet? [jessica] well, they didn't know how touse the internet, they knew how to turn--how to go there.they knew how to go to there. and they knew how to shit on people,so it worked out for them in a way. but it was--i went on so much in laterhigh school and just spent all my time paying attention to whatall the people said on the internet. amazing! all of the people,you digested all of it? - just all of it--- great.

before we move on toofar away from dial-up, can you do your best impressionof a dial-up connection, and what - that sounded like?- whoa! we have some youngerpeople in the audience that maybe have never heard this. they don't even know. i know, i feellike this, you know i had a thing for a while where i was like, "what? you never recorded a songonto a cassette tape from the radio? and that became like, "now i know how oldyou are," you know. [hysterical laughter]

but the dial up noise mightbe the other one so its like, [does impression of dial-up modem sound] i don't know. i don't think i canremember it all the way. [audience laughing, cheering,and applauding] [julie] i just wanted thaton tape somewhere] [jessica continues impressionof dial-up modem sound] yeah that's pretty great. i'm sure that'll be the background tosome drake song eventually. - oh, yeah- kanye, maybe.

[izis], excuse me. - drake's pretty young- yeah, so many. [julie] i wonder if he's everseen a floppy disk. i'm sure he's seen one. - we've all seen them.- he had to use one on degrassi. it was probably a coaster at somehipster bar, or something. - free idea.- free idea. but in all seriousness. [laughing] okay,so that was your first computer moment. how did you know--when was moment--maybein college, when you were studying art,

fine art--when was the moment that youdecided, "i want to be a letterer," or, "i want to be a designer. that'ssomething that i want to do." i feel like i just forgot about anothercomputer moment, - which i have to mention--- please share it. i was--i sort of--i think, art-wise, was agraphic designer very early on, but then didn't know what beinga graphic designer was, because we all had microsoft publisher,and microsoft publisher was awesome. - yes- but my mom also got these packs of paper

from paper direct that had all the crazycertificate borders, and i would make certificates for everyone, like, withthe soccer border, and we had this laser printer where you can actuallyfoil stamp with--through the laser printer because, it was just anormal laser printer, and then would tape a piece of foil to it, and then, run it backthrough the laser printer, and it would stick to the laser output. [julie] you're very own notary! [jessica] yeah. i have been, icould have been a fake notary.

- do you guys watch--what's that--- on the league? - yeah.-on the league. - totally. - a shout out-- - god! we are just synchronized--- on the same page-- --right now. but, i think i didn't know i was going tobe a letterer until even after college, because when i was in school i still--ithought i was just a graphic designer that made fonts for my own projects, but i didn't know that the fonts were madeby real people that were still alive

at that point, i think. still alive, and also in the populardocumentary, helvetica. which, was not out when i was in college, so i didn't learn aboutthem until much later. but i know many of those-- - those men now--- really? they're wonderful. - matthew carter - okay. is the most awesome badassis the whole entire universe,

and erik spiekermann--i was on a paneltalking to him, and he interrupted me, while i was mid-talking, to tell me i waswrong about something [laughter] [julie] that doesn't seem like athing a man would do ever! [jessica] he's german. ever! oh, that's a whole other-- [jessica] we forgive him. [julie] that's a whole other, yeah it's different.

[julie] that's great! whole other-- [interviewer] that's great. we forgivehim. it's fine. it's fine, erik. [interviewer] okay, next question. what's your approach forlearning something new? one is being really excited,two is hating it. i forget who i was--i was watching someonespeak recently and they were saying that, anyone that says that they love learningnew things is a lying asshole. [julie laughing]

[jessica] they were like, "no oneloves learning new things. people love being good at new things." the process of learning sucks sometimes,when you learn new things, you feel like you're terrible at stuff, and then you question how bad you areat everything else that you do. imposter syndrome-- you hate yourself for a little bit-- [jessica] yeah! imposter syndrome. and then you have thatbreakthrough moment,

then you're like, "oh my god! now ilove learning! learning's amazing!" and it's so much later than the beginningof learning. so much later. [julie] it is. it's like, " oh! nowi deserve to be alive." yeah! [julie] that's fantastic, yeah. [jessica] maybe. maybe. [julie] we'll see. we'll see. cool. wheredo you go for daily inspiration? i go to places that fill my stomach withdelicious treats. actually most--i don't

go to a lot of inspirationy websites,because i feel like the internet can be a crazy circle-jerkwith design stuff. so, i big thing--i mean, it really just is people re-postingshit over and over again from the same sources over and overagain. and then everyone's just like, "oh, i'm so inspired by thisthing i saw last week, so i'm going to make a new thing, and then someone else is goingto be inspired by that," and it's literally, things are four weeksold by the time they feel old,

because people are working from the samesources, because not every thing on--in the entire world that has beencreated, is on google images. so, i don't know if you guysdon't know that. [chuckles] there's lots of stuff on there,but not everything is on there. and i found that the more that i actuallylooked at those inspiry sites, the less i was actually lookingto my content for inspiration, so now now i feel like--i, i love clientwork. i'm not one of those people that's like, "fuck clients! i hate clients!" i love client work. i actually find thatmy best work that i do is for clients

because i have someone, that i feellike i have to work for, you know, instead of me just working for me, because i can--i want to tryall my projects, of course, but i let myself give up way faster thani do if someone else is being like, "so that thing thatyou're doing for us," so, the more that i actually work withthe content and look to the content for inspiration, the more inventivei think i end up being. if something ends up having to bevery historically accurate, i'll, of course, do tons of research.

but a lot of times, especially withbook covers and stuff like that, read the book! that's your sourceof inspiration! [laughs] you don't have to go online and be like, "oh. what did other people that hadto do a book cover for this book do? you mean, you didn't search fora bull for the great gatsby? - yeah. dribble--- is that something you did? dribble is a--i have a contentiousfeeling, feelings about dribble. i love dan cederholme, and he's themost kind and lovely person ever. and, i am sad for what dribble has becomebecause it used to be such a lovely thing

for people to post in progress work,and now it's a portfolio website - of 300 x 400 images. but--- that's true. [julie] so moving on. not a lot of people love that opinion. a lot of people are like, "dribbleis the best place ever. you--you're aweful, jessica." [julie] i really love the voice - you use for other people--- yeah! i think it's [laughter]

i feel like i use--i feel like i use amuch deeper voice for my mom which is really funny because i think iuse a deeper voice for "grownups." [laughs] but my peers all get that stupidkermit voice. i don't understand it. amazing. so you study--youstarted studying fine art, and you've been really vocal aboutthe difference between fine art and what web design is and evenbetween, you know, what lettering and illustration is, and what web designis. where do you draw those lines? you know, i think there's a lot ofpeople that do a lot of things. but each industry operates completelydifferently from one another.

lettering and illustration arevery similar in terms of how you interact with clients, how you bill things, how you handleartwork rights, you know, the actual process of working, which istotally dissimilar from web design, you know, web design and graphicdesign, totally very similar, except most people forget that you canseparate production from design. so, web designers; it's usuallyone big package. client's expect you topackage it all together, and present it in this lovely thing,in which the entire price

is conveyed right there. and it'severything start to finish. and print designers get to separate ita lot more because, obviously, most print designers aren't expected toalso have heidelberg presses, and run your magazine for you. but a lot of web designers are sort ofexpected to sort of do everything. and, good web designers are peoplethat know when to separate things and when they can takethings on themselves, and have people in place to do thethings that they're not the best at. yeah.

so, that's really the differences.web design and graphic design in general, is very mucha teamwork thing, as is lettering and illustration, but letterers and illustrators don'thave to assemble the team. they become a part of someone else's teamversus web design and graphic design where you are the "teamifier," you arethe person that puts everyone in place that does the thing that they do bestto actually make the project happen. [julie] right, you need to knowas a web designer, or someone who's directing a project,when to tap out and say--

[jessica] yeah! there's someone who's better atthis than i am, and so we should-- [jessica] or even mid-projectyou need to be able to say, "what you have just asked for, is beyondthe scope of what i am capable of doing, and now we need to talk to anotherperson that can handle that. - right.- and, that's a major learning curve for all webdesigners because a lot of people just don't have the balls to tell clientswhen they're not good at something because it's seen as a signof weakness or whatever,

or they're not very good at explainingwhat it is that they're best at, and, and giving the confidenceto the client and saying, "i am awesome at the this thing, and youare awesome for hiring me to do this, because i am the best at this thing.what you are asking me to do is like swahili comparedto what i know to speak, so we need to ask the swahilispeaker to go do that, and that's going to be an additional fee,and i'll show you three people that speak swahili in different priceranges, and then they can speak swahili for you, and it'll all be great!"

but a lot of people don't know howto approach that with clients, and don't have enough transparency intheir process, and that ends up being where web designers end up getting fucked,because they wait too long and then are still quoting, you know, $1000 forweb development when suddenly a project has turned into this crazye-commerce monster. yeah. "can you do the logo type?can you also do the ui work? can you also do all the illustrations because we need people lookinghappy on our websites?" exactly. "can you write all the content--"

"yeah, just write the contentfor us. that's fine." [julie] yeah, so that definitelybecomes a problem, and a lot of your projects have actuallyturned into things that are aimed at better educatingdesigners and everything. do you think a big part ofthe problem there is that, businesses or entrepreneurs in general don'tunderstand design and what aspects, make a web designer, andan illustrator an illustrator?-- [jessica] i think so. i think that'sthe biggest problem, and it's because it's annoying to have toeducate people every single time--

[julie] right. and that's why i love being a lettererbecause they don't have to do that-- [interviewer] yeah. for the most part. i do have tocome in on that first phone call and preemptive strike all their weirdshit that they are going to say, because everybody says the same thing. they're like, "we just need tomake sure you can read it"-- [julie laughs] so my first thing that i'll on thephone call with client's is like,

"legibility is my top priority." [julie and audience laugh] [jessica] and then they're like,"we trust you implicitly." and you can do that as a web designer too. [julie] yeah. you know the things that peopleare going to freak out about, and that people are going to ask for.and if you confidently say that you will handle that, and you are awesome at that,they back off, and they don't bother you as much about the otherstuff, and they just let you go.

i think a lot of people justaren't very confident, and they don't know how to present themselves, and don't know how totalk about their work, and it's so, so important. so when peoplehave that conversation of like, "is it worth it to go to art school?is it worth it to do x?" [interviewer] yeah. you don't have to go to art school if youcan learn all these skills on you own, but i think the most valuable skill thatyou learn when you're in school is actually just to be ableto defend yourself.

[julie] and communicate, yeah. and communicate. exactly. because you haveto be up there with your work on the wall, and say why you did it. you can just be like, "i don't know. - helvetica's cool"- "it's my vision!" [jessica] yeah."it looked good." - yeah.- whatever. no one can do that at critique and notjust get lit on fire by their professor. [julie] absolutely.

so, if you can learnthat in your own life, by having your own little professionaldebate club, you know, that--you're going to learn 90 percent of whatyou can learn in art school. [julie] right. which is whatwe hoped dribble would be. [jessica] yes. - for people.- exactly. do you think it has to do with web designas a profession being so new? print design has been around long, andso people know what lettering is, and they know what the process is--well,you know, depending on the client

you're talking to do you think thatit'll just get better with time, that clients will familiarize themselves with what they are asking for? [jessica] well, you know, as old as printdesign is, clients are not 300 years old. [julie] you're right. so, you're dealing withnew clients all the time. - so-- - yeah. most people have no idea what thedifference between calligraphy and lettering is, and peoplewill hire me and say,

"we have a budget of $1500 andwe need 40 phrases lettered. and i'm like, "that is not possiblewith a lettering person. maybe you can typeset it. i can recommendfonts that you can use, or we can talk to a calligrapher that is really, reallyfast, and see if they can manage it in their hourly rate. but mostpeople just--they think fonts. i've had a lot of people thatlook at my work, and they say, "hey can i get the 'v' from that alphabet?" and i'm like, "you know that i just wrotethat word? it's just a picture of a word. - there's not a whole font

- behind that.- yeah. and it's amazing how much you can blowpeople's minds. people just forget - that human beings create things - sometimes.- right. yeah. - you mean computers don't do it all?- no. you'd be surprised. i have to qualify all of my like, "i make it by hand on the computer allthe time." and people are like, [making explosion noise] "i don't understand

- what you're talking about." - amazing. like, "wait. so, you have apencil and you use a wacom, and then you"--i'm like, "no, i don't use a wacom. i use a mouse." and they're like, "what? how do you drawwith a mouse? you just move the mouse?" and i'm like, "no. you do a point here,and a point here, and a point here, a point here, and a point here." [julie] and then you send thema screenshot of the pen tool - in illustrator.- yeah, and they're like,

- "that sucks!"- yeah. "i don't want to do that." i'm like "that's why you payme to do it. it's great!" - yeah, it's great--- it's the perfect exchange. [julie] "it works out for both of us." - yeah.- yeah. [julie] amazing! so, you have collected a lot of webexperience from your side-projects. what do you think is thebiggest disconnect

between web design or the stuffthat you worked on specifically, and what someone wouldqualify as web development. well, i'm actually kind of in a weird spotbecause i have talked to so many web people in the last couple ofyears and now i'm like, i feel like i'm at more web conferences than normalconferences, and i am one of those people that's like, "all web designers should know how to do basic front-enddevelopment, they should all be writing their own blah, blah, blah." and i know that the true nerds are like,

"css is aweful! who writes css? we usethis other language that compiles it." but, there's so many webdesigners that are like, "i still use photoshop. i don't care.i don't need to do that." and because i never did that, ifeel like designing in photoshop is the worst ever. i don't understandpeople that can design in photoshop because it wasn't made to bea page layout program.-- [julie] yeah. it was made for pictures. - it was made for pictures.- right. like, "photo shop."

[julie] so people makepictures of websites. - yeah. yeah exactly--- in photoshop, well, i think maybe we should keep you here because i'm pretty sure none of our webdesigners--i mean, we use-- we do a hybrid of photoshop--some ofus use photoshop for certain things, but we cheat a lot, like take screenshots ofthe website and add boxes and words, and stuff. but most of our designers here know how to code and writefront-end html, and css. i only use photoshop to make thephotos that i take of my sketches

on my iphone into black andwhite, high contrast images. - that's the only reason--- which you can do with css, by the way. maybe we should talk later. - yeah.- let's go hang out. i could do that. but it would probablytake longer. just for that-- specific thing. right. because i was like, "yeah, [makes abeeping noise] done." [makes beeping noise] done. cool.

and also, they don't need to behigh-res. it's not a big deal. - awesome.- but, i oftentimes now when i get hired to do graphic design workthat i know will eventually be on the web, i make html mockups of the design beforei do anything within a new design. [julie] amazing! why didn'tanyone scream after that that? that's a pretty good--no. [audience member cheering] thank you! jesus. [jessica cheers]

[julie] is everyone falling asleep? betternot be. okay. anyways, moving on. - that's right!-it's, it's, i love html, and css, and php,even though everyone hates php, and i never did ruby or anythingyet, and i want to but i can't, because it's a thing that iknow, just, i shouldn't do. it's a rabbit hole i shouldn't fall down. because i have this thing that i do thati'm good at, and that would be a whole - other zone.- yeah. [julie] i mean, most of the peoplei know who write ruby, hate ruby.

- so--- really? you're probably better off. there we go! [audience clapping and laughing] i use kirby for everythingnow, i like that thing. - that's pretty nice.- but, yeah. i love it. it's like a very--everythingthat i do is so, you suddenly look up andit's nine hours later. and that's how i really feel about webdesign and development stuff too,

and i love activities that are like that.so, as much as it's really frustrating when you're spending four hours,trying to figure out how to make this jquery thing happen, in-- [julie] once it happens. [jessica] once it happens, it's amazing,and those four hours feel like they're - worth it.- exactly. so, i think that web design and typedesign are very similar because in the end, the thing that you're makingdoesn't seem as astounding as you know that it was to create.

- right. yeah. the inner nerd - in you--- yeah. is celebrating, doing a little dance in-- [jessica] exactly. exactly. and you that everyone in thewhole world is like, "oh! that's just like one of those wordpress templates," right?and, you're just like, "fuck everything!" - yeah, "here's this file. pay me."- but you know that it's amazing, and that's why people share shit on githuband stuff like that, because they're like, "check out how smarts [sic]i am!" [chuckles]

[julie] no. what are you talking about? none of usare over there-- [jessica] and that's why we have typeconwhich is the nerdiest conference in the entire universe. everyone is like45 or above. and, grey long hair, - and white reeboks, free t-shirts--- mom jeans. - mom jeans.--- amazing! - it's pretty amazing, actually.- that's pretty great! so, you have met and gotten to work withso many people that you admire, or, you like their work, et cetera.

what's the best way to meet peoplethat you want to work with? well, you know, when i was talking earlier about having that thing that you'regood at that people know - that you're good at?- right, yeah. you guys know, i mean, i surethat you have non-web friends. it's hard to imagine in san fransisco. but, there are people from back homethat know you as the web person. - right.--- so, every time you go home, you're fixingeveryone's computers. it's a big joke.

in everyone's family that you'refixing the printer, or whatever. did anyone read that mcsweeney'sarticle, recently? it was so funny! if you haven't read the--someone posteda thing on mcsweeney's. they wrote it like this epic tale of them going home and fixing their girlfriend's parents'computer. it's amazing [julie] that's right. it sounds likebootstrap fan-fiction, which exists. yeah, but it's--[laughs] you guys are suchawesome, awesome--but you become that person that thing that people don'tknow about, and that's the best way to meet people. and, within the webworld, you're not just a web designer,

you're a web designer that specializes inx part and, has done x thing, and if people know you as that thing,they recommend you for that thing. so, the more specific the thing is that you put yourself out there as beingawesome at, the more likely it is that someone's going to look at you and say,"this person is great!" or, you can just -be a really cool, fun to talk to person--- you can wear cool dresses. you can steal people's dresses from thebathroom, and all of a sudden everyone's like, "oh jessica, she steals stuff fromour bathroom, we should go hire her - to draw our logo," you know? [laughs]- that exactly how that works.

but, if you think about it. when it comesto full-time jobs it's really different than freelance, though it's actually notall that different. i've never had an intern that i looked at their workbefore i hired them as an intern. so, i've always just hiredpeople to be my interns. just based on me hanging out with them. i would go out to breakfast with someone,because they just wanted to like, "oh i'm in new york and i want to meetsomeone." and i would have breakfast with them, and they'd ask if anyonewas looking for interns and i'm like, "me! right now. you're my intern."

and they're like, "but i haven'tshown you my portfolio." and i'm like, "i don't care. you'renice. you're teachable, probably. that's all that matters." and i think that's the biggest thing. either you have this really specific thingthat you're good at and people just point to you and say, "that person drawsbunnies really well." or, you have this personality that makes people wantto keep coming back because they know that you're respectful, they know thatyou're on time, they know that you get shit done, they know that you're aperfectionist, and they know that

if you can't do it, that you'll be able tofigure out how to do it another way, whether you're recommending someone else, or whether you're bringingon someone else. - you know, so it's just like--- you look for people who can learn things, who are good atlearning, good at teaching themselves. yeah, people that have the right attitude,people that, have a really, really good work ethic, and peoplethat are self-aware. self-awareness is the biggeststrength anyone can have. know what you're good at, know what you'renot good at, because even if you have to

turn away a lot of work,if you're the person that some magazine art director comesto you and says, "oh my god! we have this amazing thing that we wantyou to do," and you say, "actually, my friend that does this styleof lettering all the time would do this way better and way faster, and there'd be no heartache with it. why don't you hire them to do it?" next time they have a thing that is rightup your alley, they're going to come to you without any question, because theyknow that you're not just taking on all the work and just, being greedy but notnecessarily taking on work that you're

- actually good at.- right, yeah. that's excellent advice, actually. that'sreally great. so, you have-- i don't know if you refer to him as your partner,but your studio mate at title case; - how did you meet him?- i met erik through friends. my friend aaron carambula, who now worksat facebook, he and i took this type design continuing ed program in new york, andtheir website, friends of type, launched five days after--or beforemy daily drop cap site. so we didn't know about each, butwe launched these daily sites at the same. it was five--four dudes thatposted to friends of type, they're still

actively doing it, and we become sort oflike sister site friends and i ended up doing some collaborative work withthem on friends of type. so then, a couple years ago, we found out we weremoving to san fransisco, but we're still in new york for the summer. typeconhappened in new orleans, which was the biggest drunken fiasco in thehistory of the universe. there was a shooting blocks from the apartmentbecause it's new orleans. but, i was hanging out with eric there, and i waslike, "eric, you live in san fransisco. do you have a studio mate?" and he's like, "no. i just work from home,and i'm like, "you're going to get

a studio with me. so, i just--we hung out,we totally jived. he does the same thing as me, and i never had a studio that doessuch like, in the same zone of work. and it's so awesome to be able to havethese really in depth critiques with someone versus--i've always shared withother illustrators or designers, and you can ask them advice, but theycan't give you super pin-pointy, hyper nerdy advice that someonethat does exactly what you do can. it would be like if you were, ajavascript person in a room with a php person, but youguys didn't totally overlap - because even if you could--- there's no overlap, actually.

there's no overlap. so you could be like,you could ask that person the question and they'd be like, "i know how togoogle that sort of, but that's it. so, being able to share a space is reallygreat, because we get to actually give - each other shit--- that's awesome. like real. [julie] that's pretty cool. moving onto our next question--any, any cards from the the audience yet? any questions?no? cool. i'll be selfish then. i'll just read all of mine. that's fine. [jessica] i noticed that you haven'ttouched your whiskey.

i haven't touched my--okay,i'm being shamed now. [jessica] i might just bedrinking mine really fast. - i'm also getting really nasally.- just hold your nose - the whole time, actually.- the whole time? just do that the whole time, yeah. so, you mentioned that your former boss--firstboss or former boss? louise. - former boss. was my first boss.--- am i saying her name right? - yeah, louise.- louise phil? - fili.-fili. okay.

- has been--- the italian way. - the italian way. you said that she hasbeen a really great mentor for you, over the years. what do look for insomeone to be a mentor to you? does it happen accidentally? are they justfriends? or, how does that work? i think it's--mentor relationships arealways something that you have to really nurture because everyone'sdifferent and needs different--you need to be giving back to your mentor asmuch as they are giving to you because i think a lot of people end up havingweird relationships with their superiors because they forget how much that superioris teaching them, and taking

time out of their day, and that they'reextremely slow, and not as good as they think they are because they're 23 andreally not good at what they're doing yet, and i think the more you have respect forpeople that are above you, and that are trying to really teachyou, the better it is. so, in that case, as much as i was notmaking a shit ton of money or anything like that, i was still 100% and myall because i knew that the more i respected her and the more i gave tothe projects, the more i got back, and because i was so respectful, andbecause i was always hyper clear about my intentions there, and always tried tocredit everything like crazy, always asked

permission before i posted anythingto my website--she had a non-compete with all of her employees--she only has like two employees at a time, so all of her employees, me and the otherdude that was there--but the non-compete said that you couldn't work for anyonethat she's worked for while you work for her or for a year after, which, when you're dealing with someonethat's run a studio for 20 years in new york, is everypublisher, every ad agency, every person that could possibly hire you, soi was getting asked to do book covers from publishers that i know she'sworked for, and i just tried to be

hyper, hyper respectful, and i would go tolouise and say, "this publisher is trying to do this thing, but i know that we havethis situation. what do you think?" and, if she thought she was hiring me for me,and not me as cheap her, she always let me do it, so--and i think because iwas so respectful of that relationship, and of the agreement betweenus, we ended up having this really good mentor-mentoree situation. it's only when people start being a littlesecretive or thinking that they deserve more that it starts to get alittle toxic. so, i think you just have to be just really, really aware ofyour--how much that person is playing

- a role in your life.- yeah. and it's not like a grab and go situation where you'rejust going to take from them what you need and not also nurture that relationship, or give back to their studio,or respect them, so.-- yeah, exactly. i mean everybody--i'm just super empathetic, i think, too. so, i'm always super aware that even peopleare being just bat shit crazy, they're being bat shit crazy - for a reason.- right. so i always try to think of that reasonbefore i react. i don't want to just have

a crazy gut reaction and belike, "you're being a dick!" i think this person must have hada crazy day let's blah, blah, - blah.--- right. there is some situation - that's informing their--- yeah. you don't need to throw gas on the fire every - single time.- right. sometimes it's okay to just look at thefire and let the fire do its thing and be like, "why is this fire burning?

let me approach the fire whenit's a little less calm." - you know?- right. that's amazing. are you mentoring anyone? not--well sort of a little bit, right now. erik has had this on-and-off intern forlike two years, he's croatian, and there's some sort of croatianmen's network in the area. it's really funny. they all have theseweird men-only barbecues. and his dad that owns some sort of wineland, he's not like a wine person. it's more like, "we have grapes.we sell grapes to people,"

you know? [laughs hysterically] so theymake all men go and pick grapes together, - and stuff like that.- i think we might make a sound board after this. [jessica laughing] for all of your different accents. - it's going to be amazing--- for all my accents? - yeah.- nice. - it's going to be great.- dominic's accent, it's more just from erik faking it. so,this guy, stepan, who was one of

the family friends of erik's family, theywere like, "stepan's in art school. he should come be your intern," toerik. so, we got an intern! [laughs] so, stepan's really awesome though. he's,he's like a growing designer, he just graduated from college and while he's donehardly any actual work under my tutelage because it's really hard for meto actually delegate work, because when you do lettering,the deadlines and really tight and the learning curve isso crazy. so, if i actually have an intern come in and try and dostuff for me--i had one time where i was like, "you're just going todo the work that i'm doing,

and with the same deadlinethat i'm doing, and that's going to be what we do. and, ihad like ten headlines for a magazine due the following tuesday, and by the time thedeadline came around, they were done with like 75 percent of one headline. andi was like, "okay. this is why interns - aren't really useful all the time.- well it's hard also--i read your most recent blog post about leveling upin type design, and they're having to mimic your style, also. and that'ssomething that you've built over time, and then you've kind ofingrained into yourself, but it's - really hard to translate to them--- and it's also--even if

you have someone literally try to copy youthere's going to be things that they do that's different, and there's an essence,sometimes that they can't get because it's like, they're going to dosomething their way, and you're going to do something your way. but, he hasdone a shit ton of data entry for me-- on the type directors club website,which i've been redesigning for free. and then--so, in sort of return for that, i have been giving him hours and hours of lessons on how to actuallydeal with html, and css, - and php. so,--- that's awesome. as much as it's not my specialty. it'sa thing that is much easier to teach

- in a short term way than lettering.- yeah, and i think this has come up in a couple other talks that we postedhere. when do you know that you're able to teach those things? there'sthis point where you're like, "oh. i know these things well,i can probably communicate, how to program php, or how to write html,and css," and it's often that women tend to short themselves, and be like, "oh,i only did this on my side-projects. so, obviously i'm not very good at it.whereas men in some examples will actually be like, "i'm a professionalbecause i've done this, like two times. well i think that's always beena thing, though. and i think

that's been one of my strengthswith my articles. and with everything, i nevertried to say, "i am the best - at this."- yeah. i always just say, "this is myexperience. let me teach you - my experience.- right. and i think that as long as you canapproach everything you do that way, you're always going to bean expert on what your - experience is.- absolutely. you know how you learned, and it might notbe what absolutely the experts do learn

- or whatever.- right. but you can teach the way that youlearned and they can learn it later in a better, more streamlined way,or whatever. but, i also think that some people just love to teach. i am one of those peoplethat i'm just like, "i love explaining stuff to people." i could sit there and talkabout stuff forever. i could teach you all sorts of stuff. i love public speaking. i feelsuper energized after.

i'll go home tonight and be like,[yells enthusiastically] and russ will be asleep on the sofa. but it's, it's like, some people,are really experts at what they do, and are so good at what they do,but they just don't love teaching. they just don't love it. and i think you have to love teaching,and that's more important than - being an expert.- right. if you don't love something, don't do it. or it's even that--teaching is areally specific skill that requires

- such weird energies.- [julie laughs] to be able to do. i admirepeople that do it all day. - i don't--- right. when i do workshops i am like--i feel like i could have mono - [interviewer laughs]- at the end of a workshop. it's crazy. it's so - exhausting.- it is. but to think that people do thatfor like nine months of the year, for like eight hours a day, is crazy.

[julie] and get paid prettymuch nothing for it. yeah. [jessica] and get paid pretty much nothing - for it,- yeah. and it's so exhausting, and it's such askill, but it's a skill that most people don't understand or appreciate, becausethey think, "well. oh my god! well, i know a thing, i can teach a thing." but not everyone can teach a thing. not everyone can teach a thing, awesome. that's what i'll title the talkwhen we post it on youtube.

- [jessica laughs] nice!- "not everyone can teach a thing. my last question for you--and this subjectheader was, "what's next for jessica?" what's one design skill or dev skill thatyou wish you had, that you don't have - right now?- part--a big skill, that i wish that i had but i don't have,but i also sort of don't want to learn, - which is tough,- [julie laughs] that's a tough zone. there's a lot oftechnical stuff with type design that i know that i should learn, and that iwant to learn, but i wish that i could just inject it into my brain matrix-style.

[julie and audience laughing] because, type design is sucha tiny, tiny, tiny community - of people--- right. that the people that are making the toolsfor type designers are other type - designers.- yeah. so, in order be able to take advantage ofall the technical tools for type design you sort of have to be a maker of thetechnical tools for type design. and, i love html and css, i love a little bitof php, i love learning a bit of jquery, and--but, the actual diving in and makingpython plugins, and learning how to

operate all these other weird--like ten plugins at once, that other type designers have madeto streamline stuff, and to do really complex opentype programming is somethingthat i really want to know how to do, but it's that totally like, "learningsucks and knowing is great," it's that whole process where itjust feels--even if i'm knee-deep in that industry, it feels really dauntingto me, and i know that it would help me so much to learn it, but it issomething that i want to learn, - but haven't learned yet.- i'm sure there are maybe, i can think of two--specifically--people who are in this crowd

- that can maybe help you with that.- i--yeah. while everything is-- - so i was thinking about--yeah.--- well, the thing is that, i don't need people to help me with it. ineed no one to help me with it. because, my issue is, - i'm such a delegator--- [interviewer laughs] - i'm so good at delegating--- [interviewer laughs] as soon as i find people thatknow how to do stuff, i'm like, "oh, you know how to do this?just do it for me. that's great. - [julie laughs]- you know, because

you're good at that. i'llpay you, it's no big deal. [julie] so whoever those two peoplewere, don't talk to jessica. - don't talk to me.- [audience laughing] don't tell me about your skills, onlytell me once we're already dating for like a year, and then you'resitting next to me on the sofa, and then i'm just like, - "oh, how do you do that thing?"- [julie laughs] and then you can tell me. - but, not until then.- amazing.

- [jessica laughing]- how would-- - how does russ feel about that?- russ makes me schedule times with him, to ask him questions. - that's amazing- [everyone laughing] he makes the most horrible faces when iask him questions in the middle of working on a project, because i'll be like, "oh,i'm trying to make this thing move over here, when you touch it, andhe just he grabs my computer from me, puts it on his lap, and goes like this, [taking a deep breath] - [julie and audience laughing]- and, nothing makes me want to

take that computer from him more than thatface and it's just him--it's not him being frustrated. it's him like, "i'mgetting in the zone." but it is - the most--- yeah. like, "hate that you're making me - do this face."- amazing. - so now we have like,--- [julie laughing] "russ, i need to schedule two hours of - jquery time this afternoon,--- [julie and audience laughing] will you help me?"

he's like, "okay. - [laughs]- that's amazing. so we'll send russ a bottle of whiskey, - also.- yeah. - i think he deserves it--- for the two hours. way more than i do, - exactly.- for sure. [julie] cool! well, thank you, jessicafor being here, thank you to everyone who showed up, and stuck around. we arehosting a drink-up at a nearby bar tonight

from now until 11:30, so drinks are on us. it's at novella, whichis at 3rd and mission. whoever wants to join us thereis more than welcome to. and, can we just give jessicaan outstanding round - of applause for--- thank you guys [audience clapping and cheering] don't give her your business card. - only one. only one.- just not five-- well, you can

-give her one business card.- just not five. - that's the--- and i'm sorry, and you're welcome for all - the cursing. [laughs]- thank you! thank you. thank you, guys!