We recently connected with Eager Zhang and have shared our conversation below.

Eager, appreciate you joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I am pretty much enjoying my life as a creative now. Actually, I do have a “regular job” — I teach at art school as an assistant professor. But working for high-ed enables me to still keep my own practice, and I love to bring my personal design process and opinions to my classes.

I can’t speak for all other people, but I do think artists and designers are the best occupations in the world, it’s a career path for true thinkers and makers. Art and design have its own approaches to social issues, it raises voices, it might not provide mature solutions, but it comes up with more questions. When I was still in college, I studied design under an engineering degree program, and things were built under commercial scenario — it was exciting and challenging, but I decided to look for something else, so I chose to study fine art and stayed indie after that. I guess a regular job would guarantee me a more stable lifestyle…but I’ would probably lose my passion in self-initiated projects and the fun researches I’m constantly doing.

Eager, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Born and raised up in China mainland, relocated in Shanghai, and now working in United States, I see my life experience “no potential rooting ground, but a place to be passed through”. (Elise Kirk, 2015). The multicultural background and nomadic dynamics of my life fostered the kernel of my practice: languages, communications, and its humanity. I identify myself as a designer, a researcher, an architect of visual dimensions, and I expand my interests in writing, linguistics and reading behaviors, using graphic design, web architecture and creative technologies as my tool to research on the discourses I care: linguistics and how it shaped our way of thinking, languages and gender, and artificial poetry.

Meanwhile, as a designer, web developer and business owner who faces the real-world problems, I see graphic design from an engineer’s perspective, and the design intuitive leads me to interpret it into beautiful, accurate slices from a planned, sophisticated system. I make websites, font faces and identity systems as solutions, but at the same time experiments, poems, data visualizations, and manifestos. A current client-based project I’m working on is a collaboration with artist Jina Valentine, who dedicated herself into a data-related research about how immigrants have shaped our land, from the past until the near future. I lead a team that translates this database into a large-scale sculpture and a screen-based interactive program, which will be physically and virtually installed at the Terminal 5 of Chicago O’Hare Airport, 2023.

My recent works received praises and features from Tokyo TDC, GQ Japan Magazine, Communication Arts, Society of Typographic Art (STA 100) , The Design Kids, etc. My visual works have been widely exhibited in galleries and organizations based in United States (Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Kansas City, Salt Lake City), China, Japan, Mexico, Ireland, etc.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I started using social media platforms for working since I was still in school. I didn’t invest too much time and energy into it, just keep posting for years, and now I have a few thousands of followers from multiple platforms, and it really worked whenever I need to announce a show reception / gathering some people / sharing recruiting informations. I know some people feel awkward and difficult for social media exposure, here are some of suggestions:

1. Keep posting it even you don’t see huge growth of followers at the first few months. It always needs a bit accumulation to finally be seen;
2. Scrolling and learning how other big influencers did with their business account: pick better photos, utilize the tag system. workshop your annotation language, etc;
3. Make sure your contact information is accessible on your account profile;
4. Separate your personal account and contents from your business! This is very important, when I’m running my business account, I don’t feel personal at all, and therefore I can promote anything shamelessly. (And your audience and lovers won’t mind it at all!)

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I hope to see more participations from the general public into those public programs in galleries and museums. Nowadays, there are many events that are hosted by organizations, that are open to public, free of charge, and some of them are designed to be educational for teenagers and non-art-related individuals. I think people shouldn’t be scared by the esoteric appearance (or vibe) of contemporary art. In my opinion, everybody can admire art in their own way and they should be encouraged to share their voice. Only when people go to museums and galleries more, will they learn the importance of art and independent researches, and then support the community by taking actions.

Contact Info:

• Website: eagerzhang.com
• Instagram: @eagerzliterally
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eager-zhang-3560a019a