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

Jessica, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My work often expresses messages of self-love, progress, growth, and empowerment. These themes are prevalent in my own life as someone who, at different times, has struggled with things like low self-confidence, fear, perfectionism, and depression. I view my work as a reflection of the messages I needed to hear the most during those times—and sometimes still need to hear. My mission is that the messages in my art are able to inspire anyone in the world who’s feeling the same way I have, reminding them they are unique, strong, and a work in progress.

Jessica, 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?

Lettering is the art of drawing letterforms by hand; it exists all around us in murals, signage, advertisements, and more. I love lettering because I feel like I’m part poet, part artist when creating, as I prefer to write my own words and phrases to express myself.

Illustration is the art of drawing images to express a message, idea, or concept in a clear and creative way. I love combining this art form with my lettering to visually support what it is I’m trying to communicate.

I combine my lettering and illustration skills to create art for national and global brands, from advertising campaigns to editorial work, from book covers to merchandise. Some of my clients include Toyota, Target, Adobe, HarperCollins, CASETiFY, and more. What ties all these clients and the work I create for them together is my bold, vibrant, and expressive artistic voice and style.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Since I’m a designer and visual artist, my main social media audience is on Instagram. I never started posting my artwork on there with the intention of creating a large following, but after several years on the platform, I can say that I have a dedicated audience with a lot of loyal and lovely supporters.

I started posting just for fun in early 2016 and eventually saw my work just get better and better. The more I posted about lettering, the more attention my account got, and I started to get featured on bigger accounts dedicated to lettering and typography. As I continued to post about my process and inspiration, my account following doubled in a year, up to 10,000 followers. During that time, I also started to attract major freelance clients like Target and HarperCollins just through my account, and after a few years, I was able to leave my full-time design job to pursue lettering and illustration full-time.

My biggest advice to grow a following on Instagram for visual artists is to take part in art and creative challenges and post A LOT of work. And since your potential clients are likely on Instagram looking for artist like you to work with, be sure to put your best foot forward and treat it like a secondary portfolio. A little effort goes a long way, like styling your photos and videos and including mock-ups of your work. Besides that, make sure to engage with the creative community that exists there. There are so many people I have met through Instagram that have become dear friends, and it’s one of the best things about the platform.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I taught myself graphic design after graduating college, and that started a long career of working as an in-house marketing graphic designer for a few different companies in the course of my 10-year design career. In 2016, I started my third graphic design job at a startup in Dallas, Texas. I found myself creatively starved quite quickly there and turned to lettering after seeing challenges pop up on Instagram. This was a turning point and the start of a long journey for me.

From 2016 to 2018, lettering was my creative outlet from a job that didn’t fulfill me. I shared more and more of my work Instagram and started to gain a following. I made friends who were also lettering artists through Instagram. Eventually I wondered what it would look like to quit my job and do lettering full-time. I started to take webinars, classes, and workshops on lettering, social media marketing, and business. In 2019, I officially created my LLC, opened my business bank account, and started taking on my first freelance clients for lettering on the side of my full-time job. I finally quit my day job in August 2021, and I’ve been running my business full-time ever since.

Since then, I’ve worked with national and global clients on ad campaigns, editorial work, book covers, murals, merchandise, and more. Just in the last year, I created a social media campaign for Latinx Heritage Month with Target, created an ad campaign with Toyota Latino, launched a line of phone cases with CASETiFY, worked with the LA Times on an article about Steven Spielberg’s film Meet the Fabelmans, and painted my first exterior mural in the DFW area at the MillHouse in McKinney.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jessicamolina.design
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/seejessletter
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/seejessletter
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/seejessletter
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/seejessletter