We were lucky to catch up with Isabel Uria recently and have shared our conversation below.

Isabel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I work as a paper engineer and focus primarily on designing with paper and managing projects that involve printing, diecutting, and hand-assembly (for pop-ups). If I were to wager a bet, I would say there may only be about 100 to 200 paper engineers or paper designers world-wide that do this type of work full-time. This is a very niche industry.

Throughout my career so far, I’ve had the opportunity to work on high-end packaging, some large-scale displays, but most of all, some awesome pop-ups! And I can tell you, every project I work on, I tackle in a different way. My main focus is not only on the work itself, but also on building connections and relationships with my clients and their teams.

I’m an easily approachable person with a bubbly and charismatic personality. This, I believe, is what allows people to freely ask me questions and have honest conversations with me. I think this is a key aspect to working well with people. I know that what I do with structures and design might fit within a larger narrative of work that my clients may be building. Thus, developing a good rapport with my clients and getting to know them and their specific projects allows us to work better together and become a stronger team. This all directly informs the design process.

As the owner of a very small one-woman company, Paper Design Paper, I put a lot of value on building these relationships because I want my clients to continue to contact me whenever they need a pop-up designed, a new package design developed, or need help managing an existing pop-up paper project they have already designed. My longest working relationship with a client so far goes back to 2011, before Paper Design Paper was officially established! They put their trust in me and my specific set of skills and experience with paper structures, and we’ve been working together ever since.

This is my unique way of doing things and, for me, it works!

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?

My interest in pop-ups began in my Junior and Senior years of college at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. I had a project where I created 3 pop-up cards for an assignment for a designs class. I spent so much time making them just right! I loved it! I was so smitten by the “wow” factor of pop-ups have that someone suggested I should connect with this local pop-up book collector they knew: Carolyn S. Hughes. So, we met around the fall of 2007, and quickly became life-long friends. She introduced me to The Movable Book Society, and to the works of Robert Sabuda, Matthew Reinhart, and Bruce Foster. This opened my eyes to the wild world of pop-ups and movable books. I learned what a paper engineer was and how there were people working specifically with paper pop-ups and paper structures.

After graduating college, I worked as a designer for LPK, a local branding company in Cincinnati. About a year later, I decided to pursue my master’s degree. Fast-forward to 2011, at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), I dedicated my entire Master’s Thesis to the study pop-ups, movables, and similar structures. For my final thesis exhibition, I made over 100 pop-ups with the main concept of allowing visitors to interact with and learn how to make pop-ups. Each person could see all the possibilities of creating unique designs with paper. The exhibition was called “Paper Design Paper”.

In May of 2012, I was hired to work full-time as a designer and paper engineer by an advertising and marketing company called Structural Graphics. Throughout the first 5 years I worked for this company, I continued to develop my skills and expertise as a paper engineer, working on high-profile jobs for companies such as Google, Samsung, Saatchi & Saatchi, Nationwide Insurance, Victoria’s Secret.

During this period of time, I also learned what we could call the less-glamorous yet intrinsically important aspect of making pop-ups: the mass-production and manufacturing side of things. I learned about printing, finishings, diecutting, lasercutting, etc., and above it all, hand assembly. Did you know that every single pop-up book in the world is made by hand? To make a mass-produced pop-up book for publication, you will always require a group of highly skilled individuals to paste together or attach each little piece that makes up that pop-up book. Every. Single. Pop-Up. It’s incredible!

Now, while I had been working a full-time job, I continued to do my own small(er) paper-related projects on the side. For the 25th Anniversary of the Louie Awards Gala, I got a chance to design a whole entryway hall made from 6 layers of paper that spanned 30 feet long! Each layer was 10 feet by 8 feet –that’s small(er), right? I also had a chance to work with a Swedish paper company named Iggesund. I designed a set of complex paper packaging structures that tested the durability, foldability, and resilience of one of their paperboard lines called Invercote. I presented this body of work at the Luxe Pack tradeshow in Monaco and the Luxe Pack tradeshow in Shanghai, where I was also granted the opportunity to do a formal talk about many of my paper projects.

Up until this point, I always found myself branding these projects as “Paper Design Paper” projects, but it really wasn’t until the summer of 2018 that I officially LLC-ed the name as a company of my own. Since then, I have had the chance to work on all types of pop-ups: from high-end wedding invitations, to intricate laser-cut pop-ups for galas, to anniversary announcements, to children’s theater sets, and in all kinds of industries, too! I’ve done corporate work for pharmaceutical companies, tech companies, printing companies, independent inventors, theater company owners, libraries, colleges, and more.

Most recently, I’ve begun making a shift from solely working with pop-ups and packaging to advising and managing existing projects that other people have already designed. Due to my expertise with production and my connections with manufacturing companies, I am not only able to lead and advise others, but also walk people through successfully mass-producing their own run of pop-ups.

More than 15 years later, after designing those initial 3 pop-up cards, I’m still very much involved in the world of pop-ups. For the last 6 years now, I’ve been a member of the Board of The Movable Book Society. Just this year, I had the honor and pleasure to be the MC, Co-Chair, and Organizer of our Biennial Movable Book Society Conference that took place in Cleveland, Ohio, an accomplishment I am most proud of. And as much experience as I’ve gained from all of these projects I’ve been a part of, I often find myself in equal awe of other pop-ups and paper works being created by other companies and by my paper engineering colleagues. The surprise “wow” effect of pop-ups continues to inspire, delight, and challenge me to create even more intricate and awe-striking pop-ups that I can share with the world.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ve had to pivot a couple of times in my life with my career. One such instance came in 2017 when I was laid off my full-time job and thought, “this is the time to officially dedicate myself solely to Paper Design Paper”. With the help of a trusted CPA who guided me through the steps, I officially established “Paper Design Paper, LLC” the following year. I got straight to work. I took contract works for structural packaging companies, took on graphic design for packaging companies, and made pop-ups for many businesses who were looking to create something out-of-the-norm.

As many people have experienced while freelancing, the work ebbed and flowed to the point where, in 2019, I found myself at a huge dry spell of projects. So, as many people do, I went to look for a full-time job that could supplement my income for a while. I landed in the corrugate industry and began working full-time again for a local POP Display & Packaging company. It was very unfamiliar territory to me—albeit still in structural design—as my familiarity and years of experience had always been with SBS Paperboard, not corrugate. This was a whole other area of structural design.

It is never an easy thing to change paths, but sometimes it is necessary. I knew taking this step was like taking a parallel path to what I was most interested in. However, I’m very fortunate to have taken this parallel road. I learned a whole new set of skills and, so to speak, wore a different hat!

A few months later, in March of 2020 to be exact, I became an essential worker for my full-time job. The pandemic brought our world to a screeching halt. The previous period of sporadic freelance projects I had with Paper Design Paper turned to a complete cancelation of ANY potential projects I had for 2020—if I’m remembering correctly, I was in talks with 3 clients to produce 3 unique pop-ups that year. Meanwhile, as an essential worker in my full-time job, I was in the most anxious and nerve-wracking environment I have ever worked in. Yet, I was fortunate to be working with an incredible team of designers that valued and respected the boundaries that we placed in the workforce so we all could continue to work to the best of our abilities all the while feeling safe to work together–even if at a distance.

This path that I had chosen to take in 2019 turned out to have shown me not only resilience in my profession and career, but coincidentally, it had also shown me the face of human’s resilience, including my own. I not only grew professionally as a structural designer here, but I also learned how to interact better with people, how to work on building relationships and connections.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

These may not be specifically resources, but there are two things that I always try to share with people, especially budding designers and paper engineers. One relates to community and the other one relates to building longer-lasting connections.

The community one is fairly straight-forward: find a community that pertains to you in the creative sphere. For budding paper engineers, for example, I would recommend joining The Movable Book Society. For budding graphic designers, I would recommend AIGA (The American Institute of Graphic Arts). And although I am not specifically an illustrator, my friend Bruce [Foster] always emphasizes the resources that are available for budding illustrators in The Society of Childrens’ Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). There are lots of opportunities, resources, and advantages that can be found by being part of organizations such as these ones. I would highly recommend you find your community and make those connections within that community.

At the beginning of this interview, I talked about how I work with clients: I like to establish good working relationships with all my clients. This happens through open and honest conversations, communication, and dedicated time. I talk to my clients, I schedule meetings, and get to know them as people as well as professionals, and throughout our working relationships, (hopefully) they get to know a little about me, as well.

At the end of the day, we are all people. We have careers, families, professional endeavors, as well as hobbies and personal goals. As people, we all live and thrive in communities. And how do you build those communities? Professional and personal communities are built by making connections, getting to know those connections, and keeping in touch. That does not necessarily mean that every client you have is going to be your best friend or anything like that. But, it has been my experience so far, that if you reach out and ask to connect, every-so-often you will find a client that just works well with you and jives with your way of thinking and your personality. And those are the clients that will be recurring and those are the clients that will value your work, and you’ll be happy to be able to work with them on multiple projects. So, seize those opportunities, reach out, and make those connections whenever you can.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.paperdesignpaper.com/work.html
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paperdesignpaper/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabeluria/
• Other: https://www.isabeluria.com/

Image Credits
Isabel Uria Devin Stoddard