We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nuria Just a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nuria, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?

Each illustrator has their own style and find your own style is something we work daily. In my case (and for sure come other illustrators), it’s a sensitive subject. In a sense, you want to have your own style and sometimes imposter syndrome hold you back. But once you found it, and you feel comfy with it is great.

But it happened to me some clients contacted me for a commission and actually asked me to change my style haha (not funny). In my art the characters has pretty importance and they have a particular look. But it happened to me few times when the client didn’t like them. Even if they reached me knowing this is my style. The time I was more shock, the client literally said: “Can you make the girl less ugly? Like more conventional?” And I was LOL. If they would tell me this in the beginning of my career I would be like “omg my art is ugly”. But I was confident at that time, so I replied “Well, this is my style, and she is cool and beautiful. Not going to draw a stereotypical woman”. And ended good haha But yeah, multiple times they asked me to kind of make the characters more “beautiful”.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m an illustrator from Barcelona. I’ve been drawing as a hobby since I’m a kid. But my jobs weren’t full connected to illustration. I was a graphic designer, first in fashion industry, then product design. Because I always loved illustration, after my job I did my fanzines, prints etc. And I started to participate at fanzine fairs. That for me was the key. Because I had already full-time job, and not really happy with it, these fanzine/comic fairs allowed me to draw freely. Step by step I got more customers and people recognize my work. And in some point I got professional commissions. These clients discovered me through my fanzines. That’s why I always encourage people who are starting to don’t miss the chance to go to that fairs.

After few professional commissions, I realise I could work fully time on illustration. Also because be full-time in an office and do the other commissions at night wasn’t healthy. So I jump to freelance illustrator stage! Must say even If I did so many emails to reach clients, mostly of my commissions, and the biggest one, is people I didn’t contact, and they found me because another work or directly from Instagram.

What I offer to my clients is a strong character design. And rad style and reckless behave characters. It’s the thing because my work stand out. Mostly of my clients are searching for that: this non-normative people and “fanzine” vibe. Also because my graphic design background, I can offer easily a full designed campaign. So its common my works are full VK. I design the poster, including typo, and I’m capable to adapt to product, video or merch. Once I started to do this fully designed campaigns, the other commissions were similar. And I love this kind of commissions. Where I have to think a global image and make the whole collection or event look well-designed and with harmony.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

One of my goals is related to merch. I would love to create a comic and create merch of my characters. I love anime figures and resin toys. So if I could see action figures with my characters that would be amazing. I would love to be able to do more comics, but nowadays is kind of impossible to fully work on it. You need so much time but you have to pay bills, you know. So it’s difficult.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

People who is not related to illustration or creative work sometimes don’t give the enough recognition to the effort illustrators do. It’s a rough market and you have to constantly work on your business. I hear so many times from people “oh you are so lucky to get this commission” or “oh so lucky to be where you are”. Im not going to deny it might be tiny bit of luck, but they don’t see how many hours I put on it hahaha how many emails, how many overnight work, how many multiple commissions at one time. So is not luck, is just simply hard work.

Same with the illustration value. Still feel some customers complain about the prices. They think the price is just related to the item material, they don’t consider is not just a tee or paper, has an idea, hours of work, etc. Sometimes you have to justify too much your work has that value.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nuriajust.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nuria.just/