We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lydia Leiwang. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lydia below.

Lydia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

Absolutely! Unlike the traditional expectations of a creative design profession, I worked as an in-house multimedia designer for my first five years. I worked both at my undergraduate university and an investment bank. The experiences primarily taught me how to strike a balance between client requirements and creative output, and acquire unrelated industry knowledge. This includes understanding the workings of college admissions, financial derivatives, and interactions with department heads or financial analysts, rather than focusing solely on creating designs that are visually captivating.

My journey into design was entirely accidental. In college, I majored in creative media, an extensive program offering animation, film post-production, creative writing, and graphic design. However, this breadth of choice led to some initial confusion as a freshman. I quickly found myself in a quarter-life crisis, asking, “What am I doing with my life?” and began to explore job opportunities aimlessly. Thanks to my experience in high school with typesetting for various community and school publications, I quickly landed a part-time job in the Comparative Literature Research Center, creating publications and promotional materials. The head of the department, introduced by my first employer, provided me with the opportunity to become involved in their admissions work, for designing their admission-oriented website and booklets. The sequence of job opportunities that followed can largely be attributed to the domino effect from that first job.

I dove into this industry when I still had a lot to learn about it. If there’s one piece of advice I’d share, it would be this: Pay close attention to your professional reputation and relationships. You never know who might present you with your next big opportunity.

Living in Hong Kong, one of the world’s costliest cities, meant that I naturally gravitated towards higher-paying jobs, even if they weren’t as creatively satisfying. However, in retrospect, I wish I had selected jobs that could better develop my skills and portfolio, such as those at design agencies rather than in-house design teams. These choices could have accelerated my growth early in my career. If you are part of an in-house design team, you’re likely concentrating on the specific products or services that your company offers. You get the chance to own and advocate for a single product’s improvement, directly contributing to its success. This role could make you an expert in your industry. It’s essential to love the product when working in an in-house design team. Conversely, working in a design agency requires a love for the creative process itself.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hi there! I’m Lydia, also known as Lili. I’m an aspiring motion designer, currently working on my MFA in Motion Media Design at Savannah College of Art and Design. My work primarily delves into the realms of 2D animation, cel animation, and visual design. I’ve worked on a variety of projects, but explainer videos and packaging design have been at the forefront.

My journey into motion design was somewhat serendipitous. I started out as a multimedia designer, with a focus on web design and branding. One day, a client noticed my casual dabbling with character animation and lower thirds and asked if I’d be interested in crafting an explainer video. That project marked my introduction to the field of motion graphics design and I quickly found myself enthralled.

I’ve grown to love the boundless potential that motion graphics design offers. It’s a medium that pushes boundaries, allowing artists to express themselves in dynamic and engaging ways, and create immersive experiences. A motion graphic can tell a story or convey complex ideas in a digestible and often entertaining manner. It combines elements of storytelling, design, animation, and sometimes even sound design, to create a multi-sensory experience that static images or written words simply cannot replicate.

As an emerging professional in this field, I continue to refine my technical skills while exploring the artistic and storytelling aspects of motion graphics design. This field has allowed me to combine my love for art and technology in a way that’s engaging and contemporary, and I’m excited about the opportunities it presents for visual communication in the digital age.

While I’m still in the process of developing my unique style and voice, I am fueled by my passion for the craft and the vast possibilities it offers for creative expression and effective communication. I look forward to bringing my creative visions to life, crafting dynamic and engaging visual experiences, and sharing the magic of motion graphics with others.

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?

That’s a great question! Even my mom still gets puzzled everytime I talk about “motion” design. I usually try to describe it like, “Do you remember the rad animations you see before the Super Bowl kicks off? Zip, boom, whoosh!” But next time she will still tell people I might be sketching out the next season of SpongeBob SquarePants. Motion design is sort of this wild crossroads between traditional graphic design and animation. So, it’s no surprise folks not steeped in the creative world sometimes scratch their heads, trying to get a handle on what mograph really is, and just how far its potential reaches. I guess you could say we’re like magicians crafting cool stuff!

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Looking back, I deeply wish I had found the motion design community and platforms like Motionographer and Art of the Title at an earlier stage of my creative career. These have proven to be real gems that I unearthed only after relocating to the US to pursue my MFA. In my hometown, motion graphics was a budding, somewhat niche field, leaving both clients and creators somewhat at a loss for words to describe it. But here in the US, the industry has flourished and grown, presenting a wider array of career paths. I often find myself daydreaming about how different things could have been, had I been armed with my current research skills and had access to these online resources and communities years earlier.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.listen2pic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/listen2pic/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lydia-leiwang-276374146/