We were lucky to catch up with Lindsay Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lindsay, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

After rejecting most art classes until my senior year in high school (mostly because I was a very intimidated student), I discovered that fine art was what I was most interested in, so I pursued it in college and even went on to get graduate degrees. It wasn’t until after I was done with my undergrad that I realized I had no idea how to make money as an artist, I just knew that I loved making art. I had virtually no education or skill with digital art programs like Adobe Illustrator, or Photoshop, so I taught myself once I was out of school.
My process could have been much more efficient if I had listened to my mom, who always told me to take some graphic design classes so I could find a job after college. I was stubborn and really didn’t think I would ever have to grow up or enter the “real-world”.
While I took the tricky road of having to teach myself how to use design and animation programs, I think my education in fine art was valuable in that it taught me the fundamentals of how to look at and analyze the world. With a fine art education, you are forced to examine history, conventional thinking, and perceptions, and turn those ideas into a visual or conceptual interpretation that can be communicated with others. It’s like a form of investigation or problem solving, and I really love it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a visual artist and thinker. I see my work as existing in two slightly separate, but related realms: a fine art realm, and a commercial art realm. It’s taken me a while to feel like the two are connected, but in recent years, they’ve started to merge and feel more connected to one another, and in turn, myself as an artist. My work is pretty varied. When I started out as a graphic designer/illustrator, it was primarily creating surface pattern designs for a shoe company. I had no idea such a job existed until I was out of school, and I was blown away. I love creating patterns, and illustrations which then get turned into shoes, clothing, or other products. From there, I started to pick up other illustration jobs, and slowly started to teach myself 2-D animation. For the past 10 years, I’ve worked on logos, posters, animations for short films and marketing, murals, designs for vehicle wraps, album covers, wallpapers…..the list goes on. I love the variety, but my favorite projects are the ones that give me creative freedom to insert my own voice into the project.
I think one of the things that sets me apart from others, is my color palette. Color is something that I’ve always been very particular about. It can make or break a design for me, and inspires the way my projects unfold.
I’m a very social person, so as someone who primarily works alone, I get super excited to work with a team. I love hearing other people’s ideas, and I think the collaborative process is where the good stuff starts to emerge.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Oh there are so many things I wish I knew about earlier in my creative journey! The big one is that I don’t think my fine art education adequately prepared me to navigate finding a career in the arts. I feel like I was mostly encouraged to become a gallery-exhibiting artist, with the example of huge artists who are showing at the Tate, or the MET, or whatever….which is like telling someone to become a rock star. I was not shown how to have an alternative career within the arts and all the cool little niches I could fall into. I would have loved to have been more educated on how to run the finances of a business, how to do my taxes, write contracts, market myself, and to generally advocate for myself!

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The goals that drive my creative journey are my everyday inspirations, and dream projects. I love seeing what other artist are up to, and trying to figure out how I can get similar projects. Some of those dream projects include illustrating books, puzzles, album covers…and I’d love to make the crazy animations that play behind musicians at a concert-Beck had some cool ones a few years ago and I was mesmerized by them. I love the pairing of music with visual art, it’s so magical and really enhances the story of the moment.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lindsayannajones.com
• Instagram: @lindsayannajones
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-jones-0a0a9995/

Image Credits
Lindsay Jones, Chris Brandt