We were lucky to catch up with Elizabeth Leyk recently and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

There is a saying that goes something to the effect of “if you’re not at least a little bit scared, you’re not thinking big enough”. I think there are some risks worth taking in life that you’ll never feel fully ready to take, and those are usually the ones that end up shaping your story big time.

For me, there have been several: changing my major to art (because “what are you going to do with an art degree?!”), starting a family and leaving a comfortable in-house corporate design job to spend more time with my kids & start my own business rank high in my mind of those times where I was some 50/50 mix of absolutely terrified and utterly excited. I don’t consider myself a big risk taker, generally speaking (although I’ll do almost anything to find a geocache. *Google this*). I’m a planner, classic over analyzer, passionate creative, recovering perfectionist and all-out misfit in both the worlds I occupied before deciding it was time to start my freelance design business. I was too rigid, practical and analytical for the art school crowd and too free-spirited and artsy to ever feel like I had truly found my place in the Cubicle Land setting of a corporation.

I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit and that comes from my innate desire to create. I get this crazy thrill out of making things that make the world a more beautiful or interesting place whether it’s art, design, a good meal or a cocktail. I remember sitting in my cubicle working on Powerpoint slide after Powerpoint slide, looking at pictures of my husband and my girls who were 3 and 1 at the time and then down at my growing bump thinking “for what?” with this sense of guilt for missing out on so much of those first few years of the girls’ lives pouring into work that I realized I wasn’t necessarily passionate about. On top of all of that, we were about to bring a third baby into the world and compound it. A switch flipped in my mind and it was time to move on. It was time to spend a summer soaking up the girls and actually enjoy a bit of what I knew would be my last pregnancy before welcoming another baby to our family. It was time to give myself space to find this place of balance between being mom and pursuing my creative passions by starting my own business.

I had no guarantee of what work, if any, would be welcoming me into freelance-hood. I live in a fairly small city with not much demand for creative services. Most my family and friends quietly (some not-so-quietly) thought I was nuts for leaving a steady job with the promise of maternity leave ahead at 6 months pregnant, but in my mind there was no other option. I wasn’t getting time back, I wasn’t getting less pregnant and I certainly wasn’t getting more passionate about Powerpoint. I’d see well-meaning former colleagues at the grocery store who would ask me “how’s retirement treating you?” who had no idea that not only was I now handling three kids three and under, I was also starting my own business amid all of it.

I was pleasantly surprised that with no internet presence, project after project kept flowing in by word of mouth. I had this exciting mix of work from non-profit organizations to small businesses to larger corporations and it’s grown each year since staring my business in 2017. Since that time, I’ve had the chance to really get to know my kids, to watch them grow into their personalities and to carve out time for endless crafts, library trips, story times, etc. They are my best little cheerleaders with this beautiful curiosity for what I’m working on. Now that they are all in school, I’ve been pouring into getting back to my art roots and learning digital illustration and surface design and I’ve started tapering back on new graphic design clients to start creating more space for that pursuit. I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to design for clients whose work I’m excited about and to have a front row seat to the difference design makes in their businesses. I feel even more fortunate to have a husband, who through all three of those big risk-taking moments has stood by me and said “you’ve got this”, especially when I didn’t believe it myself.

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 joke that I actually got into the creative industry after having my first color matching debate on the difference between Salmon and Orange in a kid’s box of Crayola crayons in kindergarten. In reality, I knew from a very young age that I was passionate about things like drawing, mark making and design, but never believed it was possible for me to make that into a job. I never quite know how to answer this question because there are two sides to what I do now: graphic design (which I’ve never advertised for) and illustration (which I now have on online portfolio and social media presence for).

I started out majoring in Interior Design and quickly learned that that kind of precision wasn’t my passion and thanks to the support and encouragement of my now husband and a couple of wonderful professors, changed my major to Visual Arts as a Senior in college. I knew that I was just generally interested in understanding how people turned creativity into a career and job shadowed in the creative services department at a corporation for a day, eager to get a peek at everything going on there from the photography studio to design to printing to video production. I later landed an internship with that studio and went home in tears because they handed me a stack of graphic design projects due to their only designer having to go on leave unexpectedly and at that point, I hadn’t had a single graphic design class. I went to the local library and checked out every book they had on the Adobe Creative Suite and taught myself how to do graphic design that summer. I was later employed at that same studio as a full-time in-house designer for about 6 years before starting my own freelance business. I specialize in small business branding, but do a wide array of print and digital media projects for non-profit organizations, corporations, small businesses, etc. Many of my favorite projects have been for restaurants as by nature of being in food and hospitality, the clients are passion driven people and it often involves branding, signage, environmental graphics, menu design, etc. and it’s then a physical space you can walk into and see your design at work, which is an amazing feeling.

Amid COVID, my work exploded. Almost every client (especially hospitality-based ones) had to rethink how they were doing business, which brought on many tight turnaround projects as they adapted with ever changing regulations during the pandemic. As crazy as things were, I felt burnt out and started to really miss making art. My papa, who passed away in 2019 had told me as a kid “you’re gonna write and illustrate a children’s book someday” and that never left my mind. I was really missing him and decided to do a little research as to what that would take. I discovered this world of illustration and surface design that was such a neat intersection of my art and design backgrounds and couldn’t believe I hadn’t considered this avenue of work before. As a snail mail enthusiast and sewing machine tinkerer, the idea that I could have my art on stationery or fabric blew my mind. I invested in an ipad and have been learning and building up a portfolio of illustration and surface design work on the side of graphic design ever since. I hope to do Papa proud one day and make that picture book a reality! Picture books have been a lifelong passion of mine that was really reignited when I had kids of my own. I just think they’re such a beautiful and important vehicle for connection and an accessible medium for sharing the combination of art and story with kids in a screen-free way.

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

Creating something that never existed before that brings other people joy or helps them see or experience the world in a different way than they may have otherwise. I think that applies to both the graphic design and illustration sides of my business. When someone tells me that an illustration I created put a smile on their face or made them feel something, I instantly smile. Good work affects people and has the power to change the tone of their day and that’s a beautiful thing. Even after over a decade of doing design work (and now more recently building up illustration and surface design), I still feel such a huge sense of responsibility and honor in being trusted to do this work. It makes me so happy to work with clients who respect the process, are invested in the collaboration and then are so proud of the outcome and what it means for their business. When you think about it, each project is a bit of a trust fall. Much of what we do in creative work is subjective, so in order to create work that resonates with people, you have to take the time to listen and understand where they’re coming from. It’s a more empathy driven career than I ever would have anticipated.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

Yes! I’ve been a graphic designer for over a decade and now also do digital illustration and design fabric collections, some of which are available on Spoonflower. I’m currently in the portfolio building phase of illustration and surface design but hope to start pitching to art licensing companies soon!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://elizabethleyk.com
• Instagram: @elizabeth.leyk.illustration