We were lucky to catch up with David Wilson recently and have shared our conversation below.

David, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Before I realized that graphic design could be a “real” job (this was in 2004 or so) I had an inkling that I didn’t want a normal day job—the type of job I thought would be doing the same thing every day, over and over. So, when I stumbled into the world of graphic design I thought “if I’m going to do something every day for the rest of my life at least the projects and clients and subject matter will change.” That idea led my trajectory into wanting to freelance, or at least be my own boss and pick my own clients. But freelancing, for me, didn’t happen over night… or even over a month… or a year.

There’s a saying, “I don’t want to work a 9-5, so now I work 24/7.” That phrase rings true for me. After college, I immediately tried to start my own business. But I didn’t have clients and only had a school level portfolio and I REALLY didn’t want to go get a real job because I thought if I got a real job it might suck me in. It would make me stagnant. So, instead, I worked two other jobs (part-time at a screen printing shop and part-time as a custodian at the local Ice Arena) while trying to create a better portfolio and build my client list.

I worked non-stop trying to make design and illustration pieces that would get me work. I took on ANY job that came in because if I was making money doing creative work I felt like I was moving forward. Eventually I was landing more freelance gigs and could quit one of my part-time jobs. After a while, I landed a larger client who provided stable contract work so I could quit my other part-time job. Now, I was on my own.

At this point, I was learning that work begets work. People were seeing I was doing more high caliber design work and working with actual clients so I was getting more commissions. I was also doing more self-promotion and figuring out what I was good at and what clients needed. For instance, I started marketing illustrated spot portraits after a professor of mine suggested I should. I landed one magazine job and my name began to get passed around as an illustrator who could be counted on for timely turnarounds and never missing a deadline. I also used all my skills to stay afloat. I was working on graphic design projects for corporate tech companies, doing illustrations for magazines, as well as videography projects for local companies and weddings. I’m not sure I could have made enough money if I only had one of those skills to rely on.

I learned that a lot of being a freelancer is realizing the job is not the pursuit of doing great work but doing work that pays so you can keep moving on in pursuit of great work. Some of the work I was doing was nothing I would put in my portfolio but it helped pay bills and keep me afloat. And sometimes the non-portfolio work paid for me to take on lesser paying clients or pro-bono work that allowed me to take creative risks.

Freelancing right after school might have been the right decision for me (even if getting on my feet took a while) but I do wonder if I would have learned more and gotten better had I got a design job for a while and learned the ropes of the business and working with clients before heading out on my own. I have run into situations where I look at other designers’ work flows that are so much speedier and efficient than mine because they learned tricks and tips from other professionals at their job. Being a junior designer somewhere would have allowed me to learn more about contracts, project briefs, work processes and just got a general working education from senior designers and employees.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is David Wilson. I’m an illustrator, designer, writer, and filmmaker. I graduated from Kent State University in Visual Communication Design in 2009 and have been freelancing ever since. Early in my freelance career I was doing a lot of corporate graphic design, small business branding, band posters, and videography (music videos, short documentaries, promotional videos). Somewhere along the line I picked up illustration work for magazines like The Atlantic, Forbes, Men’s Journal, New York Magazine, The Boston Globe and more. Currently, I’m one of the Creative Directors at Belt Publishing where I do book cover design. I also spend as much time as possible on personal projects like films and comics. My wife (Misty Wilson) and I just had our first graphic novel, PLAY LIKE A GIRL, come out on HarperCollins this September 2022 and I have two more graphic novels in the works.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My creative goals have changed over time. When I first started freelancing, my goal was to be a freelancer. I wanted to make enough money to have my bills paid. I didn’t need anything extra, just enough to survive and do creative work. Eventually my goals changed financially and creatively. I got older and wanted to make enough money to get a loan for a house or take a trip. I also always have the goal to do better and more meaningful work. This change in goals made a change in how I operated—being more picky with clients, upping my rates, saying no to certain jobs to make room for more beneficial jobs. My goals changed again when I had kids. I can live a chaotic, unstable, unsure life but it felt irresponsible to do that once I had two kids to be responsible for. Now my goal on my creative journey was to support a family AND stay creative. This has led me down the path of getting my Masters of Fine Arts and consider teaching—a chance to earn stable income, stay creatively fulfilled in the classroom, and be even pickier with my creative projects and focus on things I want to do instead of things I might need to do.

My overall goal is to live a creative life and I’ve learned to accept that the definition of “creative” might need to change from time to time.

What do you find most rewarding about being creative?

I’ve been struggling with this idea of being an artist as being rewarding. Being a creative is of course rewarding and a luxury, to be able to make art as a job, but I look at the world and the good that other people are trying to accomplish (activists, teachers, nurses, firefighters) and get down on myself for “just” making art. Sometimes it doesn’t feel rewarding because I think I should be doing something more important. But after a very smart friend of mine told me that making art—specifically my wife and I’s graphic novel for middle graders—creates empathy and that the world needs empathy, I felt like I was doing important work. When the parent of a young girl e-mailed my wife and I that her daughter, who was the only girl on a flag football team and was struggling with her reading assignments, resonated with our book, Play Like A Girl, and couldn’t put it down… I felt an immense sense of purpose and reward.

And I’d also like to share a quote from Ethan Hawke that made me think that creating art can be more rewarding than just the selfish pleasure of making art…

“Do you think human creativity matters? Well, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re really not that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anyone’s poems—until, their father dies; they go to a funeral; you lose a child; someone breaks your heart. And all of a sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life. ‘Has anybody felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’ Or the inverse—something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes—you love them so much you can’t even see straight. You’re dizzy. ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’ And that’s when art’s not a luxury—it’s actually sustenance. We need it.” —ETHAN HAWKE

Contact Info:

• Website: workdavidwork.com
• Instagram: downpourdw
• Twitter: downpourdw

Image Credits
Studio photo by Genevieve Menyhart