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

Alright, Adam thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My most meaningful project is Archibald Gruff’s Muffle Monster Field Journal.

The Muffle Monsters started a few years ago during a time when I was in therapy, trying to work through a lot that I didn’t have words for. My therapist gave me a prompt: draw my “big feelings.” I didn’t plan anything or overthink it — I just used my pen and started drawing.

What came out were these small, strange, expressive creatures. They weren’t designed; they just appeared. Each one seemed to carry a different kind of emotion or memory. After a while, I stopped trying to label them or explain them and just let them keep coming.

Those drawings eventually built their own world — and that world became The Muffle Monster Field Journal. It’s part coloring book, part explorer’s notebook, and it invites readers to make their own discoveries. It means so much to me because it came from the most honest place possible — the middle of something real — and somehow grew into something that connects with other people too.

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. I make things that live somewhere between storytelling and a sense of humor about being human — monsters, creatures, and weird little designs that invite people to finish the stories along with me.

I’ve never really grown up, and I’ve never stopped playing or creating. Over the years it’s turned into this mix of projects — books, prints, trading cards, and online art series — all orbiting around the same idea: turning feelings and imagination into something you can actually see.

I’ve explored grief, uncertainty, and a whole range of human emotions through my work. Lately, it’s become more and more about the monsters, I think because I’ve reached a point where I just want to be completely authentic and expressive — to draw what’s real to me and let it stand on its own.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

If there’s a goal, it’s to stay honest — to make work that carries some piece of truth or curiosity, even when it’s weird or funny or uncomfortable. The monsters, the cards, the books — they all come from that same place. I’m interested in what feelings look like when they take shape, and how a drawing can help someone recognize a part of themselves they didn’t know how to name.

If the work connects with people, that’s the best-case scenario. But it always starts the same way — me trying to understand something, and using art as the way to do it.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I’m making the first-grade version of me — the kid who dreamed of being an artist — happy.

If I had a time machine, I could go back and tell him I didn’t let him down. It’s not lost on me that not everyone gets to live out their childhood dream, but I wake up every day to color and light, whimsy and imagination.

And because I also teach art in different ways, I get to watch people of all ages connect with the creativity inside themselves. That’s the part that never gets old.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://adamsanford.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamsanfordart
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1AubzeHAB8/?mibextid=wwXIfr
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@adamsanfordart?_r=1&_t=ZP-919jvAv5OFq

  https://www.amazon.com/Archibald-Gruffs-MUFFLE-MONSTERS-Journal/dp/B0FM7RP6Z3/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.5a1qGSMgKTYW66ykpIt_GA.Y3A-aVi7H-mGoYY-cyK3Nb3MlzfQxfXCuGwt1kx4vYo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Archibald+Gruff&qid=1762378576&sr=8-1