Kate Illustrate

My message:

Good Afternoon, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your work? I’m a graphic design student at Leeds Arts Uni and we have been encouraged to talk to other creatives to get more of an idea about life after uni and life as a creative etc. I’m obsessed with your work and came across you a while ago from the work you did at Finch Bakery.

There’s just 5 questions and I would be really appreciative if you would take your time to answer them for me. 

1. What made you decide to be freelance and would you recommend going down this route to others?

2. Where do you get your inspiration from and how do you cope with creative block?

3. How did you get into illustration and how have you found working in the ‘real world’ in comparison to uni?

4. Do you have any tips/ advice for getting your name out there?

5. If you could give your younger self one key bit of advice what would it be?

Thanks for taking your time to read my message. 

Kind Regards

Lucy Gibson

Kate's response

Hi Lucy, thank you so much for getting in touch! I'm actually honoured that you thought of me- I know how annoying it is to try and get people to answer you for these kind of things too.. it took me months for my dissertation!!

1. Throughout education, I've always wanted to create things. I was an Art Student at the University of Leeds and I was pushed into a form of making that I wasn't very comfortable with. So, alongside my degree, I made sure that I continued drawing and creating things in the style that I loved and uploaded every piece onto social media. From this, I formed a tiny business of selling hand-drawn personalised gifts- My portfolio blossomed into Kate Illustrate. It's a very satisfying thought that you don't necessarily need to follow the rules or be told how to work and to just do exactly what you love. So, yes- I would inspire anybody to just go for it. 

2. My inspiration changes all the time as I'm forever scrolling through Pinterest and flicking through books. But, I would say that my biggest inspiration is an Artist called Rory Dobner. I've been fan-girling over him since the age of 16 and I had the pleasure to meet him and explore the behind the scenes of how he worked last year. His drawing and his lifestyle is immaculate. 

I take on a lot of work as I'm pretty fast at what I do. So, I either go onto something else or I procrastinate for half an hour by uploading content on my social media accounts.

3. I kind of answered how I got into Uni on the first question but I've always been a glorified doodler. Art was always my favourite subject and even when I wasn't at school or Uni, I'd be joining Arty Events and shows to make sure that my work was being seen. I've always been an Art geek. I miss Uni. I would love to go back to the lifestyle that I had during university but at the end of the day, I wasn't succeeding in the way that I am now. I built the foundations of my little business throughout my final year of university and developed it further since, which has gotten me to where I am today (hopefully, by next year I will have grown even more.) 

4. It's hard work. I try to keep up to date with the latest trends on social media quite a lot and try to make sure that my content feed is visually attractive to make the viewer stop and hopefully have a look through my page- for example, I will always have quite a fun and colourful Instagram story which HOPEFULLY gets the viewers attention. 

Other than that, make friends with everybody who is local to you and that is doing the same thing as you, it's amazing to see so many local independent businesses who support others and work as a team! 

I hope I haven't waffled on too much. I know I can do! Thank you again Lucy, I hope this has helped!