We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jill Lin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jill below.
Alright, Jill thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
Ironically, the moment I knew I wanted to pursue an artistic path professionally was when I started gaining success in my career as a creative director in the advertising/marketing space. That’s when I knew I had to dive into something else as well.
My day job gives me the opportunity to work with creatives (photographers, directors, writers, designers), but there is a specific type of creativity needed in the marketing space. You’re meant to solve business problems using your craft and at the end of the day, the work you make is in service of the company. While I appreciate that, I’m also someone who needs to be able to move fluidly and make work because I have something to say, not because there’s a brief.
I haven’t quit my day job, but I am also an illustrator. One is not more important than they other and they serve different needs. As an illustrator, I’ve worked on projects with different fashion designers, published a children’s book, am working on my second one and I am also talking to another artist about a potential collaboration. Being able to do these things while juggling a full-time job has given me the freedom I need as a creative. Through this process I’ve also learned more about myself as a person – what I value, what I appreciate and what I want to represent.
Jill , 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?
I am a creative director and also an illustrator.
These days, I focus on a lot of my illustration work on fashion but intentionally through a lens that celebrates a wider cast than what we’ve typically been accustomed to seeing in fashion. I want to normalize diversity in fashion and fashion illustration. I want to help highlight and tell stories of people in the fashion industry who have disrupted the industry, not just because of their vision, but because they played a part in celebrating and creating space for different stories. As an artist, I want to make sure whatever world I’m creating through my illustrations includes versions of ourselves we can see and relate to.
What do you find most rewarding about being creative?
Connection. Having someone I don’t actually know reach out to me to tell me how my work has impacted them is more valuable than any award or form or recognition.
A few years back, I made a piece of artwork available to print and use during an anti-gun violence march and a little girl sent me photos of her and her mom marching with my artwork and wrote me a wonderful note. It made me feel really happy and honored.
A few months back, another stranger out of the blue DM’ed me and her message was this, “Whenever I scroll through your page, I always feel seen and represented – and not in just a performative way. Thank you for including all shades/tones in your art.”
There are more of these examples and I’m so grateful and lucky to have them. Knowing what you put out there can impact people in positive ways or make them feel seen or able to relate is part of why I do what I do.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The lesson I had to unlearn was to stop calling this a hobby or a side project. I’ve been published in a magazine, books, published a children’s book, worked with reputable people in the fashion industry on paid projects and yet I had a hard time calling myself an artist/illustrator because my main source of income came from being a Creative Director in marketing.
I felt like an imposter and believed I wasn’t a real artist because I didn’t go to school for it or I wasn’t a real artist because this is not the only thing I do. I believed in that outdated social stigma that you had to choose one lane and own that lane in order to be taken seriously, which is not true. We’re starting to see a shift in society where creatives and artists move fluidly from one industry to the next and the underlying constant -despite what the project or industry is – is that it came from them. I quite like being to move horizontally through this world versus picking a lane and trying to only do one thing. It’s far more enriching as a human to live life this way. I had a conversation with another multi-hyphenate woman/artist, Azadeh Shladovsky, about exactly this — horizontal living vs vertical. It was eye-opening.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pploffashion.com
- Instagram: pploffashion
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jilllin