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

Tania , appreciate you joining us today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

I always believe what I have now is the accumulation of all my knowledge and past experiences, so if I did something differently, I might be somewhere completely different now, like being a programmer.

But there are still things that I want to change with my way of learning and developing my skills. I would love to be more proactive in the new opportunities and research more about the industry. At the beginning of my study, I was following what my professor asked. I laid a great foundation for my design skills. But after I graduated, I found that there are a lot more in the industry that the school would not teach me. For instance, I am currently in a very small industry called motion design. It is an industry that thrived recently, and I did not know about it at all before I started my creative career. If I discovered it a bit more back in time, I may not need to spend money on going to grad school too.

However, it is not only what I would do if I were back, but also what I should keep working on now. I think it is necessary to look more at the works, not restricting myself to motion design but all the different forms, art styles, and cultures, so I can catch the trend and develop my own style at the same time.

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.

I am a graphic and motion designer currently based in New York City.

I started to learn drawing because of the influence of the cartoons and anime I watched as a kid, and I enjoyed drawing fanart for it. It was my first inspiration to go to art school and study art. Now I look back I feel like I didn’t really consider my decision carefully, no thorough research about the schools or about my future career. And I just let it be.

Then, I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for undergrad. I first aimed to become an illustrator or comic artist, but after my sophomore year, I found that I couldn’t make illustration as a job and that I was not motivated enough to create my own story. Fortunately enough, my school encouraged interdisciplinary study, and I was able to try a lot of different things. Finally, I chose graphic design as my spine major. I enjoyed design more because I always had a brief and worked from there. To me, it felt more rewarding to solve problems than makeup something from scratch, and I loved gridline, and everything follows a certain rule. Also, it seemed like a job that could actually make money. After I graduated, I got a job as an art director and designer, and I started to work on a lot more animated social campaigns, where I learned about motion graphic design. It combined animation and graphic design together, which are two of my favorite art forms, so I picked it up quickly. since then, I decided to dig further into the field of motion graphics and become a motion designer.

Now I came back to school at MFA Computer Arts at the School of Visual Arts with a clearer goal that I wanted to further develop technical skills in motion design. I think my skills and experience in graphic design and drawing helped me to learn animation. Luckily, what I learned in grad school got me an internship as a motion design intern at Apple this summer. It was another refresher of my understanding of the industry, not only about skills but the way professionals think and work. I hope it can be a great kickstart for my future career.

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

A more conceptual idea that drives my creative journey is the next thing I am going to make. In the beginning, I struggled to find a thing I wanted to do and let my name known. I followed many artists on social media and I want to be like them. However, after I studied design, I started to enjoy the process of solving problems and the feeling of accomplishment when making something for others. I realized, as a designer, that I am going to work with many different businesses or individuals, and my creativity is going to help them. Then, I started to look forward to the next client I met and the next problem I was going to solve.

I do have some more specific missions as I dive deeper into my practices, and they keep changing as time goes by, like switching my career path to motion design, which was recently accomplished. Now, my mission is to have my own design business, maybe back in my hometown in China. There is an old saying that “the falling leaves will return to the root.” I wanted to bring the knowledge back to contribute to the community. Though it may take a long time to return and there is a lot to learn other than design, I am very excited about the path forward.

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 people don’t realize how important communication is in the creative industry. I didn’t realize that, too, when I started my journey. I thought if I did good enough work, someone would pay money for it. So, I would spend all my time not talking to people and focusing on making my own stuff, and thus I missed a lot of opportunities. After I started working, I found that creative works are always collective, so it’s important to express my ideas and give feedback accordingly. So, I spent a long time learning how to communicate my ideas and sell myself.

Another thing people don’t understand is how long to make something creative. There are not a lot of “aha” moments in my practice, and my best ideas always evolve from a plethora of iterations. Sometimes the time we spend on something also depends on the form of it. A film person once asked us to make a 2 minute narrative animation in a week not knowing how making animation is different from filming something. It is totally fine for these misunderstandings to happen, and it really shows how communication is important in creative works as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tanialuo.work
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanialuodesign/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tania-huiting-luo0306/