We were lucky to catch up with Sophia Chunn recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sophia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

This will be the most boring answer: practice. And convincing myself that I could do it. I think this applies to anything, not just creative pursuits. There’s no reason you can’t do it or be good at it. Even if it feels like lying to yourself, that’s what you have to decide to believe.

I’m not sure there’s any way to speed up the learning process—I’m still learning now. But I think what can *slow down* the learning process is not being willing to fail and being comfortable with failure. This is all very cliche advice but it’s cliche for a reason. In an effort to un-cliche it, I’ll say it in different words: there will never be a version of you that does not fail. You can only add success, progress, joy, fulfillment. You can’t subtract failure. Every project I’ve ever worked on has required little failures throughout the process to get to a satisfying end result.

One of the most essential skills I learned I think was articulated for me while I was in school: thinking of type as image. Because it really actually is. Written language, in whatever language, is comprised of tiny images put together. I think grasping this concept helped me to understand the rules of type and the rules of image, so and how and when to break them.

Sophia, 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 work in publishing! Which is comprised seven people.

Not actually but it’s a small industry. And I find that most people really only interact with the front-facing publishing job: the authors. But there’s actually a whole world of behind-the-scenes—it’s just like other entertainment sectors (movies/tv, music, theater, etc.). So what I do—book cover design—is just a contribution to a group project. I’ve used too many em dashes already, which is a sure sign that I work with books!

Most of what I do is in-house at a publisher (Penguin Random House), but I also do a small percentage of my work for indie authors self-publishing their book. In either context, my job involves taking a book cover from conception to final and mitigating between stakeholders to create something everyone is happy with. This usually involves plenty of problem solving and maneuvering. A lot of the time for me it means illustrating parts of, or all of, the cover to meet our needs. Or chameleon-ing my design style within a certain genre convention. Those are two things I’m proud of—and I hope I’m not mistaken in believing I do well.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

I had one tweet randomly go viral, and I still get inquiries from that! Which was weird and unexpected, because I have a fraught relationship with social media (I’m not skilled at it). Outside of that, I also get work from referrals/recommendation/word of mouth. It can be tiring to put your All towards Everything, but I think people can feel when you are dedicated and interested—and the lasting impact stays with them. They feel internally motivated to share that experience with others, and recommend you when it’s applicable to do so.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think non-creative people don’t realize that we will always see our work with different eyes—and maybe even all of the art in our discipline, we’ll look at differently. It’s refreshing when people who aren’t artists or designers are impressed with my work, because I’m never impressed with my work :)

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sophiachunn
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophia-chunn-752808204?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SophiaIsWrite