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

Alright, Doris thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

It might sound crazy but I decided my future career path as a designer as early as I just entered high school. I can’t recall at all what triggered me into this field, but I was so determined, and although for some reason I didn’t get to learn design in university, I came back to it in grad school to pursue this path.

However, becoming a self-publisher is something beyond my expectation. I’m always enthusiastic about publication design, but working on my own books professionally seemed challenging because of the publishing environment that I grew up with and fixed my idea about this industry. After I really got down to it, I found it still challenging but also simple and rewarding. Having a corporate job and running my self-publishing press now at the same time, I’m still figuring everything out and I think my pursuit on this path slightly changes day by day, and I have decided not to fix myself down.

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.

I’m a New York-based graphic designer at the moment, also a part-time self-publisher who runs a small press with several friends that produce our own publication works and sell them through book fairs, bookstores and other distribution channels.

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

I think it’s the positive responses that I get from the audience, especially when they converge with my self-recognition. A story I can tell happened just the day ago, when our press participated in this year’s Multiple Formats Art Book Fair at Boston University.

There was a guest coming directly to buy my work “Distant Flash”, but more exciting was that she told us she happened to see someone else holding the books and was immediately drawn to them, so she asked where to find this set of books and was guided to our table. “Distant Flash” was a project that I devoted most energy to up to now, and I am very proud of it, so I was even more honored and grateful to see people love it and are willing to support it.

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?

I think the most common gap between non-creatives (many of whom are likely to be my audience) and myself as a creative is that they are not familiar with this field that we are working in. The general public don’t have much of an idea about artist books, independent publishing, non-commercial graphic design, this kind of things. It takes time and effort for them to understand that artist books have a different set of criteria to general publications and that these works are not created “for” audiences but rather a form of self-expression. On the other hand, it is also the practitioners’ responsibility to educate the non-creative public in regard to this.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://designdorisliu.cargo.site/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shirorie_3/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doris-liu-3b4b5b1b3/