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Who is Emily Joy Rich? Emily is a Graphic Designer, Lettering Artist and Muralist based in Bristol, UK. She works for both commercial clients and alongside design and advertising agencies. She studied Graphic Design at Coventry University, which is where her passion for typography and hand crafted lettering started to grow. Her work combines modern calligraphy, lettering and elements of illustration, playing with scale and colour. She always uses uplifting messages in her work, to inspire positivity.
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Emily’s Dog - Cassy
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An interview with Emily Joy Rich
Which three people dead or alive would you want to go to the pub with? I’m going to go for, first with Obama, I feel like we would have a great chat. I would like to meet one of the suffragettes, Emily Pankhurst, put her in the mix. I feel like she would have good stories to tell. I feel like her and Obama would get on. Also, Brunel, he’s got some good stuff to teach me, I’m quite into architecture, maybe he could teach me a thing or two. I’m not sure if they would all get on, maybe Brunel would be a bit left field. It’s my party at the pub, they don’t have to get on.
Which typeface would you use to represent yourself? To be honest I’d like to design my own. If it was to represent me it would probably be one that I have designed. It would be a script, modern brush script, I’d like to draw it myself.
You say your passion for typography started at university, what was it about type that made you passionate compared to other parts of graphics? I feel like type is kind of the basis for a lot of things in graphic design. A lot of the time design revolves around the type that you use. It’s an integral part of design in general. I’ve always liked drawing, I enjoy drawing type, you know when you’re at school and you have to make posters and they’re like “who’s going to do the bubble writing for the header?” That would be ME! Typography always adds an element of personality, changes the whole design. I would say that’s what drew me in.
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Who are your biggest typography influences? I follow so many people on Instagram, my entire feed is filled with type, I love it, I can scroll for days. I would say a lady from Australia called Gemma O’Brien, she’s amazing I basically want to be her, she does a lot of lettering stuff. I would say there is a guy called Rob Clarke, he does a lot of lettering stuff that’s more to do with brands and logos, and then for actual typefaces I’d say there is a type foundry called Colophon foundry, they do lots of cool stuff. They design type for specific things, they did this one typeface that was for a primary school and that was all to do with legibility, the aim was to aid the legibility for the children, using the A’s that you learn draw at school rather than the A’s … It was really cool. Functional piece of work but also beautiful.
Lots of your work has a really positive, important message. How much of it is the client and how much do you get to decide on the outcome? I think it’s always nice to put something positive out there, rather than a really depressing message. I wouldn’t write anything horrible on the wall. Clients usually want something fun and inspiring, something that people will relate too. Generally good vibes, usually when I do work for myself I always try and add a positive spin on thing so if it catches someone eye it might put a smile on their face. I like to inspire positivity.
You have recently gone full time freelance, when did you decide that this is what you want to do full time? I feel like I’ve known for quite a long time, I think it’s just having the balls to actually do it. It’s a big decision and it’s scary. I’ve been doing a lot of freelance work for the past two years quite a lot alongside my job and it’s got to the point where I’m actually having to take holiday from work to be able to do this extra work and it’s like, ‘why am I doing this? Why don’t I just stop?’
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“Typography always adds an element of personality, changes the whole design. ”
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What was your other job? I was full time at a design agency in Clifton, it was quite full on because I was doing that as well as this on evenings and weekends as well as everything else. It feels quite nice to finally be able to dedicate all my time to just one thing now. Bit of a relief to be honest, but at the same time I’m really going to miss all of my friends at work.
Do you still get to see them [work friends] sometimes? Well I hope so! To be honest I left three weeks ago so it’s all very new and exciting, but I’m sure I’ll get to see them at some point. I can pop back in, maybe they’ll hire me. Weirdly the first mural that I ever painted was for my work in Clifton at the agency.
What was the mural of? It said “creativity is contagious, pass it on.” Apparently it’s a quote from Einstein, but I don’t know I think maybe they just made that up. So I feel like they’ve kind of helped me in my journey.
If you could have an ideal client who/what would it be and would there be an ideal brief? I would really love to work for Strava, I’m a bit of a Strava nerd, I don’t know if you guys use Strava but I love it.
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Are you a mountain biker then? I’ve done a little bit but not too much, I’m more for road cycling. But to be honest I don’t know what this brief would be for Strava as I can’t see them...I don’t even know if they have offices, I don’t know where they would be. But that would be a cool client to work for I think. Like the amount of data they have is just insane, that would be a cool one. Or maybe Nike, they always do cool stuff but at the same time, they are paying children in China like 5p to make shoes, so I think it also has to align with my values and stuff like that.
Do you have a certain process that you go through every time? Yeah I guess starting sketching stuff. Normally, I have quite a tight brief and they’re like, “we want these words in this colour on this wall” so there’s not like a huge process to go through, it’s just getting to that final design. Generally, I do everything on my iPad even sketching stuff I do it all on my iPad. I sketch out a couple of different designs and lettering styles for what I want to do and I feel like fresh eyes are so key. When you come back to something the next day and you’re like ‘this is shit.’ I don’t try and squeeze it into a day because I’ll always come back to it and be like what was I thinking. Do you ever do that? Fresh eyes is the best thing.
What are your future ambitions creatively? I’d like to a make a font firstly, maybe it’s going to be that one. I’ve got so many ideas and sketches of various fonts that I’ve like dreamt up over the years but I’ve never actually done it and gone through the process of digitalising it. To be honest, I don’t actually know how to do it, but I will find out and it will be great. I want to make some fonts. I want to do a bit more digital stuff. I think at the moment a lot of my work is painting murals, which I love but I think that those same skills of lettering can still be applied to more digital focused work. Whether it is like animation or logos, you know like finessing stuff and refining stuff. I want to expand what I’m doing a bit so I’m not just painting, even though I do love painting. I want to do a bit of everything basically that’s the dream.
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How long does it take to do one mural? It depends how big it is to be honest, take standard size which is two and half metres which is normal ceiling height by about four metres or so, maybe five. Generally, that takes about two days, but then there’s all the prep which sometimes I forget about as well and forget to quote for. There’s all the design stuff as well, thinking about colours and going to B&Q to get all your paints mixed and then realising they’ve mixed the wrong colour. There’s a lot of extra stuff, and sometimes you have to travel somewhere and sometimes stay over somewhere so there’s a lot of extra costs and extra time on top of just the actual painting. But actual painting probably takes about two days for a standard sized wall. I don’t know, all walls are different sizes.
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What would you say is your favourite part of the process? Do you like having tunes on? I do yeah, but sometimes I try and do too much, I try and film everything as I’m going and everything just takes longer. If it’s a two day painting job, morning of the second day it all starts to come together and I’m like ‘OK this is going to be good’. Because the first day I’m just doing the background and all the boring bits, but there’s a moment on the second day that’s like ‘OK, I can see it now, it’s all coming together’, and it almost looks like what I designed.
That must be a really nice feeling. It’s good, it’s good; I just have to remember to take lots of pictures. The amount of times that I’ve painted something then got home and realised I’m never going to go there again and I haven’t taken enough pictures.
If you had piece of advice for your younger self what would it be? Tricky one. There’s not really anything that I would do differently. I think just work hard and be nice, just keep going. Put loads of effort into everything you do.
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“Typography always adds an element of personality, changes the whole design. ”
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Do you have any other design tips or advice? You guys should all do work experience, just do it. Even if their not advertising for work experience just email them, just ask to go in for a week. It helps so much, soooo much. Just be that annoying person on the phone that says “Hi I sent an email about work experience have you got it?” It doesn’t matter how annoying you are, it doesn’t matter, and even when you know you’re being really annoying just keep going. I would say that’s my biggest tip. My mum made me do it in the summer after second year and I would definitely recommend it.
What did you do for work experience? I was living in London and a friend of a friend of my mum worked for a magazine company and knew the creative director. So I went there a did two weeks of work experience there and then I went somewhere else and did two weeks. Also as part of my design course, in third year we did a term which was an internship so I went back to the same place. I would really recommend getting a bit of experience, even if it’s not great it’s experience, and you can put it on your CV. That’s my top tip.
Any advice on portfolios? I feel like my portfolio probably wasn’t very good after university. I feel like a lot of the projects you do at university are quite ‘out there’ and before you put them in your portfolio have a think about how you can tailor it to a business perspective. Ask, how can I make someone buy this? Who is my audience? We did the same at university, a lot of briefs were ‘make this thing for whoever’ and it’s almost like blue-sky thinking. I think a lot of the time with portfolios the business aspect gets lost, and when you take a portfolio in people are looking at it thinking ‘how can this make money?’. It sounds really brutal, and that it’s all about money, but it kind of is. So just have a think.
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