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

Molly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share a story about the kindest thing someone has done for you and why it mattered so much or was so meaningful to you?

I have a friend, Daniel Fishel, who I affectionately refer to as “Illustration Dad.” We met in 2019 when we had both been invited to a creative roundtable for an episode of Working Not Working’s Overshare Podcast. I was less than a year out of college and had major imposter syndrome sitting amongst Daniel, Ping Zhu, and Marly Gallardo, who all had established careers. In the episode, I was candid about my inexperience as a recent grad and how it was hard to break into the industry.

After recording, Daniel invited me out to lunch and we talked further about what it’s like to be a newcomer. At the end of lunch, he invited me to be a part of a Facebook group of POC illustrators. Afterwards, he began inviting me to social gatherings with other illustrators. My network of friends and colleagues stems from these first interactions. I didn’t know anyone in the industry prior to moving to New York straight out of school. If Daniel hadn’t been kind enough to take me under his wing, I’m not sure I would be where I am today professionally.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

In simplest terms, I’m a freelance illustrator and designer. I love to draw lush greenery, lifestyle imagery, the occult, and clutter. Some of my clients include Adobe, the New York Times, NPR, and Madison Square Garden. I’m also a designer with experience in layout design, environmental design, packaging, and UI/UX. In the past, I’ve had day jobs designing exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History, art directing and laying out children’s books, and building out tech startup websites. Currently, I’m illustrating my first two picture books: “Women On a Mission” releasing later this year and “Alight: How the Red-Crowned Parrot Found A New Place to Belong” slated for 2026.

But I would say I’m a “maker” more than anything. Based on the nature of the current creative climate, I think there’s many illustrators and designers work exclusively in digital mediums. While that is true for a lot of my work, I love to integrate analog practices that border on crafts and printmaking. I’m obsessed with risograph printing. I’m trying to get better at animating. I love making paper cut art.

I look for commercial avenues to create personal work that excites me. I run my own business selling my own prints and stationary. I’m on Etsy, in several brick and mortar locations, and attend craft fairs. It’s meaningful for me to be a part of the production process whenever possible. I mainly sell risograph prints, which I print myself whenever I have access to a machine. I love attending fairs and connecting with people. I’ll never get sick of the feeling when someone excitedly comes up to me to tell me that they already have my work hanging in their home. Sometimes it gets isolating working alone as a freelancer. It’s gratifying to know my work doesn’t go straight into the void but ends up in peoples’ hands.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I’m still learning this to mixed success: I don’t have to monetize all my hobbies/ not everything has to go on social media. I’m working on reclaiming art for myself instead of making it performative. There’s an added layer of pressure to make things polished enough for Instagram or to turn into new inventory. Instead, I want to take the time to make things for myself that don’t need to be career-motivated.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Leaving school in 2018, my ultimate goal was to be a full-time freelance illustrator. To me, that was the ultimate symbol of creative freedom: to have a personal voice and style so revered that one could make an entire living doing what one loves. But I had to be grounded in realism. As a fresh grad, I didn’t have connections, I didn’t have a portfolio I was ready to show, I wasn’t confident in my artistic style, and I had no financial safety net to mess around while I figured all of that out. So, I started with a design day job. In the evenings I would work on personal pieces that I wanted to round out my portfolio. I sent cold emails to dozens of art directors. I printed and bound mini portfolio zines I mailed to art directors. It took many months before I got my first freelance job (many thanks to Vinnie Neuberg for hiring me for a piece at Narratively). From there, I was patient and kept at it illustrating in the evening until I had enough momentum to quit my job in 2021 to go full-time freelance.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mollymagnell.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mollymagnell
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollymagnell/
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/mollymagnell

Image Credits

all taken by myself