We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Novaria Lebedev a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Novaria thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

I hope that I can leave this world better than I found it. I hope to connect with people through my art, stories, board games, or illustrations to make their day brighter. Art, in my opinion, can facilitate many conversations and bring up emotions we may struggle to process independently. Writing and visual arts are the closest thing we have to magic. I can hear the thoughts of someone who lived hundreds of years before me and see the images that went through their mind while they were alive. You can’t really do that any other way. We get caught up in the mundane and forget to find the simple beauty around us. We forget that everyone is the main character of their story. I hope my legacy is that people remember how I used my one and only life to make the world a bit brighter for those around me.

Novaria, 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’m Novaria, or Nova for short. I’m a neurospicy artist and game designer in the LGBTQIA+ community. Crafting and creating things with my hands has always been a massive part of my life. Ever since I was little, I would draw characters and write stories. I dreamed of owning a small business that sold my artwork for most of my life. I do a bit of everything: leather/wood/metalwork, charcoal/ink/graphite illustrations, laser cutting/engraving, interactive art, and board game design. The latter is the newest thing I’ve been focussing on because it scratches the creative itch better than others. I love helping people prototype their ideas and have done a lot of playtesting in the board game industry. Having ADHD, I had to find ways to work with it instead of constantly fighting it, and having a diverse skillset in art, in general, has made it easier to find that dopamine in my work so that I can hyperfocus and knock out a piece quickly for my clients.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

There are a lot of books that I enjoyed, but here are a handful:
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans—It started as a popular college class and was turned into a book. It’s about taking a prototyping view of your life, recognizing the levers you can and can’t pull, and adjusting your life to get you where you want to go. It’s heavily focused on the journey and not the destination. The authors come from a place of privilege, but there are a lot of great takeaways that have helped me.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely—I’ve used this as a How-to for pricing and marketing. It dives deep into the psychology of decision-making, marketing strategies, why they work, and how the fear of loss can derail our efforts to make the best decision in a given situation. I love psychology, so this was just a fun read.

Saving the best for last.
Anything by Brené Brown. She does a lot of work around shame, and I can’t recommend her enough. Check out her TED Talks, her books, etc. When starting a small business, shame can be a massive deterrent to getting started. “Oh, I’m not good enough.” “What if people don’t like my stuff?” There is a market out there for whatever you are selling. Have you ever been to a Curios Shop? It’s full of wild and weird odds and ends, and little gremlins like me frequent it! If you have something a bit out of the ordinary, that’s fine! You’ll find your people if you reach out, and Brené Brown does a great job of breaking that wall of awful surrounding it.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I’ve done everything possible to keep my initial costs as low as possible. I slowly purchased equipment over the years and trained with it as I had the resources and work required. I still have a day job where I work remotely in my studio, which gives me time to think through my next art pieces or games without the stress of constantly producing. It’s currently just me in my business, and aside from the amount of proceeds I donate to LGBTQIA+ charities, the rest is put back into my business to expand it and afford me more options. I try to be careful when making a business decision and think through its consequences, but when I am ready to pull the trigger, I do it and don’t second guess my decision. Linear time is what it is; there is only forward. I’ve avoided business loans and investments because I want to maintain control of my process without the interference of banks and investors. I’m sure if I specialized, I could make a more prominent name for myself, but then I would be fighting against how my brain operates, which would sap the joy from what I do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.noval.design/
• Instagram: @novalartdesign
• Other: I stream from time to time on Twitch!

  https://www.twitch.tv/novariavl

Image Credits

Novaria Lebedev