P r oCe s S ideas and inspiration in contemporary design
Shine United
Profound campaigns spring from this Madison, Wisconsinbased ad agency's comprehensive client relationships.
Janine Rewell
Helios Design Labs
This Toronto-based digital firm creates sites that put visitors in the driver's seat of documentaries.
Leta Sobierajski Jump into her world where everything's a bit odd
$19.99 Issue 32 September 2017 www.processmagazine.com
A Finnish illustrator with limitless imagination explores every possible medium, from body painting to dollhouse making.
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Leta Sobierajski
Jump into her world where everything's a bit odd
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Image series for Kaibosh Eyewear celebrating five inspiring and inspirational artists
D.S. & Durga perfume advertisement
Tell me about where you grew up and how your childhood influenced your ideas about creativity.
I
grew up in the small town of Jefferson, New York. When I say small, I mean that I went to the same school from kindergarten through 12th grade and played every sport—soccer, basketball, and softball—because there wasn’t much else to do. I was born in New York City, but my parents moved to Jefferson when I was one. My entire youth was spent upstate in nature, and we lived in a very isolated area where you couldn’t see our house from the road because we were in the middle of the forest. I was an only child, and I spent most of my days playing by myself. I made my own toys, I read books and made up stories, and I played on a tape recorder—I’d record my voice and have conversations back and forth with myself. (laughing)I was lonely, but I was able to entertain myself that way. In 1998, we got the internet and it was a portal into a new world. I started to discover other people around the world and I read into anime because I watched Sailor Moon on television. I started to draw my own fan art, and I asked my parents to gift me Photoshop for my 12th birthday. It was the one thing I wanted so I could scan in my drawings, color them, and share them on my DeviantArt account. I posted my work and people commented—that was so exciting for me! There was life outside of Jefferson. Progressing from there, I explored Photoshop more. Our school didn’t have much of an art department, but I did independent study classes. I was very studious and pushed myself. I was a perfectionist, and, unfortunately, I think I still am. I loved writing, math, and science. Before design, I wanted to go to school and major in writing with a side of math—I loved precalculus because it was like figuring out puzzles. But because I took independent courses, I started to make more. I did architectural drawing and worked in Quark to design my senior yearbook. I designed posters, drew images, built websites, and even attempted identities, all of which ultimately put me on a more design-focused track.
It sounds like you really drove this creative exploration that happened in your life. Did the people around you encourage you to pursue a creative path? I’d say that by my senior year when I was 17, I felt like this was the only track I would take. My parents didn’t really know what design was, but, thankfully, they’re very encouraging (they are creatively inclined in different ways). They’ve always pushed me to make my own decisions. I think that’s why I’ve over-applied myself in a lot of areas—because I wanted to do it all. I also had a teacher who was willing to sponsor my independent studies. He wasn’t a graphic designer—he taught technology and architectural drawing. Regardless, he was still willing to help me hone in on what I was looking for.
You went to State University of New York at Purchase after high school, right? Yeah. I didn’t know that places like School of Visual Arts or Rhode Island School of Design existed. I didn’t know anybody who was on the same path that I was moving towards. My mom works for SUNY, the state university of New York. Because of her affiliation, she got me a discount on my tuition, so SUNY Purchase was a really attractive option. I had visited Pratt, FIT, and Parsons, but it came down to the price tag. We’re not a wealthy family and I’m thankful to not have to pay back student loans right now. I can’t imagine
Process Magazine | Leta Sobierajski
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what that would be like. I’d be hindered if I had to pay back thousands of dollars every month for the education I received.
Yeah, and I want to talk about that because you’ve been working independently since 2013, and debt can affect that. I had some student loan debt, but I only have about $1,500 left to pay off. I didn’t come out with that much debt, but even a small amount prohibits what you can do because you have to make choices based on your financial situation. Debt takes away your freedom to say yes to the things you want to do and explore. You have to do certain things to pay your loans. So, good for you. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have that always sitting on your shoulders and to be considerate of taking on a job you might not really love, but it offers heaps of money. The city is expensive and that doesn’t help.
It sure is. So, let’s talk about your time after college up until what you’re doing now. I know that you worked for a studio doing motion graphics straight out of college before you went independent. Tell me about that. When I was a sophomore in college I got this really fantastic internship at a studio called HunterGatherer in Brooklyn. That studio was run incredibly. I worked for my boss, Todd, who was such a brilliant mentor. He taught me that you don’t need
Complements Project: The Book collaboration with Wade Jeffree
to work on a computer all of the time. We had a wood shop at the studio, and that’s also where I learned to work a camera and set up lights. We built things to shoot for magazine covers, commercials for brands, and even infrastructure for branding identities. The possibilities of working physically were endless. I couldn’t comprehend that way of working before having that opportunity. I worked at HunterGatherer as an intern for two summers and then I was hired on full-time when I graduated. It was fantastic that the studio was so small because I had my hand in everything that was going on, whether we were sending story boards to a client or brainstorming a new logo for someone like the New York Times. However, because HunterGatherer was
run by one person and I was one of very few employees and I was still learning, I thought I needed to go to a larger studio to understand how something like that operates. So I went to a filmmaking and visual effects (VFX) company called Moving Picture Company (MPC). During my interview, I asked them if they had a photo studio or were doing anything by hand. They said, “Well, maybe.” They were obviously trying to give me some sort of allure to work there, but couldn’t answer my questions properly. On my second or third day at the job, I sat down and thought, “Fuuuuck, I made the wrong decision.” The
people who worked at MPC were lovely, but they were working on these crazy programs like Cinema 4D, Maya, Smoke, and Flame. For all I know, these could have been superhero characters. I didn’t know how to use any of those programs. I was designing story boards for commercials, but they were for massive brands who gave the studio shit-tons of money. It felt very soul-sucking for me. I transitioned from such a happy environment to burning the midnight oil to crank out something for a massive sterile brand—there’s no heart and soul in that kind of work.
Never Alone collaboration with Meridith Jenks and Courtney Cho
I was miserable for eight months and then I quit. I went to another studio just to give motion graphics one more try. I worked at a company called Brand New School, which was a little better, but still very heavy in motion and VFX. I realized that I didn’t have the heart for it. I felt miserable and consistently called my mom crying because I didn’t know what to do. That ultimately brought me into a desperate situation where I drastically decided that I had to abandon motion graphics.
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Process Magazine | Leta Sobierajski
That’s when you went independent, so let’s talk about that. What was your thought process like? I’m sure there were fears and anxieties around getting clients, paying your bills, and running a business in New York. How did you approach those in your mind?
Poster series for Odd Pears' polka dot collection
I didn’t. (laughing) Even though I’m very organized and like to plan everything out, in this situation, I did not think five steps ahead. I just emailed people every day and made projects on the side because no one had hired me yet and I needed work to show. When you’re in that situation, you have a fight or flight mentality. If things don’t work out and you get desperate, then getting another job is always an option. It’s not the end of the world. But I was curious to see how far I could go on my own and who would actually be willing to pay me for all of these personal projects that I had put on my website. Thankfully, it worked. But, ultimately, I think I was so overwhelmed and confused and excited that it was too difficult to plan a bunch of steps ahead and plot out a perfect strategy for working independently.
Had you saved up any money from when you were working full-time before you went freelance? I had a little savings, but I wasn’t making heaps of money at those motion graphics jobs, either. I think I was actually being taken advantage of. When I negotiated my last job they asked what I made at the previous studio and I was so honest that I told them the exact amount. They offered me $3k more and I thought that was great. There’s something precious about that naiveté, but now I realize that you have to fend for yourself at all times. You have to be strategic about what you say.
Yes, you do. I want to talk about your aesthetic. When you started doing personal work at that point is that when you started to explore and develop the aesthetic you have now, and how did you settle on it? Something I had been taught in school is that you need to do a massive range of things so you are marketable to anyone who wants to employ you. It sounds logical, but once I was in a state of independence and scrambling to figure out what could be mine and didn’t have work coming in yet, I had to make things on my own. I had to have an individual vernacular to become appealing to potential clients, which is the total opposite of my institution’s mentality. There were projects that had been bubbling inside of me for a while. I had even tried to pitch some of them at my jobs, but was often told that the aesthetic wasn’t applicable for the client or it was just a little too outrageous for what they actually needed to give. Aside from putting these ideas on paper, I hadn’t had the opportunity to make them. I’ve always been inclined to build things physically—it feels great. Maybe that stems back to playing in the woods as a kid and throwing sticks around. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had things I wanted to make. For example, I wanted to work sculpturally. I live near all these 99¢ shops and small odd stores, so I walked in with $10 dollars and picked things that looked interesting to me—and then I bought a grapefruit. I came up with this really ridiculous totem that has a grapefruit on top of it. It’s one of the first things I did and I’m so proud of it because it’s the first thing that became recognizable as my personal aesthetic. It
got printed in an issue of Computer Arts a few years ago and that was the first time I’d gotten exposure for anything. I lost it because I didn’t understand how people could like it—it was such a ridiculous, unintentional piece of work. As time has progressed, I’ve realized that creating things that don’t make sense are sometimes the most appealing because they haven’t succumbed to the restraints of a client or third party. It feels good to kinda shit something out. Embracing uncertainty has been very difficult for me. I’ve become much better at going with the flow, but I feel like I’ve been an incredibly rigid person often focused on one direction in the past. I like that. I read this book called Contagious, which is about why things go viral and why we share. It addresses the psychology behind both. When you create work that’s unexpected it elicits particular emotions and people want to share it with others. Also, you’re not playing by the rules and asking what you can make that every other designer is going to like. And I spoke with Will Bryant recently and he lives by this motto of “Embrace your weird,” which I love for two reasons. First, we’re all weird in our own ways. If we’re willing to embrace that, we realize we’re not as weird as we think
Left Page: (top) Poster series for Odd Pears' polka dot collection, (bottom) Never Alone collaboration with Meridith Jenks and Courtney Cho Right Page: Image series for Kaibosh Eyewear celebrating five inspiring and inspirational artists
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Process Magazine | Leta Sobierajski