Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jun Lin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Jun, thanks for joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

As someone who works on a visa, I understand how our anxieties around security can skew our relationship with creative work. There are many external and internal pressures to work hard, all the time. It can be overwhelming. It can suck the life out of doing creative work.

I know it can be hard to find fulfilling work that also pays fair wages. I think I just got very lucky. I’m lucky to get paid to do work that I love. And my coworkers are great people. I get to work with them on projects that not only align with my personal values, but that other people find meaningful as well. On top of that, I try to work on other freelance projects when I can, which can range anywhere from editorial illustration work to designing book covers.

Jun, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I primarily identify as a print designer, but over the past couple years, I’ve been exploring various other areas such as motion work, video editing, event branding, packaging, and community research. I work at a publishing platform with a wide range of programs, so I’ve had the opportunity to design across a variety of formats. Broadening my skills has made me more of a generalist. It’s also allowed me to take essentially an organization’s core sensibility and evolve it over time across print, audio, space, and live programming.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I can only speak as a designer but I think we do our best work when the rest of society values creative work enough to put resources towards it. For employers those resources may mean paying fair and living wages, for governments it may mean providing educational resources, and for clients it means putting in the effort to establish professional, collaborative relationships with the creative person they’ve decided to work with.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me it’s the chance of putting out work that makes someone go, “Oh, that’s interesting. That made me think. That made me feel something.” I’d love to have made a thing or two that actually moved someone or changed the way they thought about something. I enjoy it when other people’s work challenges me in that way, so in a sense, I’d like to replicate that effect in my creative work.

Contact Info:

• Website: junlin.info
• Instagram: @junlin.info