Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kat French. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kat, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My parents were kind of equal part rigid and free-spirited and I feel like that balance has been incredibly helpful to my career as a creative business owner.

Both of my parents were in the Air Force and were well-versed in rule following, structure and working hard. This definitely trickled down into our home life as the house was always clean and we were expected to excel in school.

On the flip side, my mother is also a visual artist and obtained her BFA while I was in elementary school. She ALWAYS encouraged creativity and was fantastic at facilitating everything from crafts to fine art (and even a few creative neighborhood pranks) for my brother and I. I spent my childhood playing with all kinds of artistic mediums and was never once scolded for my creative efforts, nor was I told the “right” way to create something. My mother was a firm believer in artistic expression and I believe this environment laid the foundation in which I got to hone my creative roots.

Once I settled into adulthood I had a great affinity for both creative endeavors AND administrative/organizational tasks. Little did I know that these personality traits could work beautifully together to handle the organization needed to run a business, but also to have the mental freedom to think outside the box with both problem solving and product development.

Kat, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an illustrator creating positively fun paper goods for stores across the country and beyond. I hand-draw every piece in my collection which includes greeting cards, notepads, art prints and more.

I love tapping into cultural moments from the past to stir up the positive emotions from our adolescense. I believe people are searching for positivity and laughter and my aim is to find those things in the world around us and celebrate them through art. This includes a lot of animal observations, 90s pop-culture and iconic imagery.

I’ve been able to slowly build my business over the past decade while also being home with my children. I have been intentional about slow growth and am honored to have my products carried in about 200 stores worldwide, including a few national chains. I look forward to the next 10 years to see how my style and business evolve.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

A big part of why I began my own product line was the desire to create my own art the way I wanted to. After years of working as a graphic designer I developed a sort of distaste for client work. I always had a slightly different bend towards a more humorous and light-hearted design and I didn’t feel like I was able to express that fully through my projects for clients. It is definitely rewarding to be able to design something that is in my head and allow the viewer to either take it or leave it.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

The ironic thing about NFTs is that I was working on a project to develop an NFT for an old developer friend of mine. I spent several months creating hundreds of character elements that could be coded into random mixes to create NFT characters. This project didn’t pan out, however, as the NFT market took a turn right before we were preparing to release it. Despite the amount of work I put into the project, I am actually thankful that it didn’t get published because since then so much of this medium is now based on AI generated pieces which I am not in line with supporting since AI art is dependent on pulling from the creative work of actual artists without any sort of compensation for them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.katfrenchdesign.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katfrenchdesign/

Image Credits

all images taken by me