Creating Your Own Opportunities

Ian Paget: I read that when you was younger, you believe that you wasn’t good enough to be successful. And I’m sure there’s listeners out there that will be able to relate with this. But today, the more that you’re being yourself, the more self confident you are. And the more that you’re succeeding as a result. Can you share with us how you went about finding yourself and growing in confidence to become successful in the way that you have done?

Meg Lewis: My goodness, it’s been such a journey and it makes me feel a little bit sad and also great knowing that every human feels this way about themselves. Most people live their whole lives without being confident about who they are and finding out and doing the self discovery they need to do to figure out who they are and what makes them amazing. And so I was just like most other people whenever I was growing up and even at the beginning of my design career, I learned very early on as a kid and as a teen, that anything about me that was different from other people I needed to hide because if I showed it, then people would make fun of me or point that thing out about me. And it would just get me attention in a way that I wasn’t ready for.

And so of course, as I got older, I just learned to conform and do things the way everybody else did. And especially when it came to my design career, that’s also what I was taught to do. I was taught to study what successful people do and just do that. And so conforming was such a big part of my life that when I was growing up, I would study the way that humans were. I would study the way they talk to the way they dressed, what they acted like at parties, when they were dating what they did. And I would just do that. So that way I didn’t receive any extra unwanted attention or I didn’t get made fun of. And it got to the point where whenever I was in my early 20s, I was a curated version of myself.

Even whenever I had social media, I would look at other people’s Instagram accounts and say, okay, this person has a lot of followers. And they’re posting photos that look like this. And a lot of people are posting photos that look like this, that have a lot of followers. So I’ll do that too. And when it came to design work, I was just studying what other people were doing. The type of design style they were working in of the successful designers. And I would just emulate that style.

And so a lot of that was happening throughout all aspects of my life. And I didn’t really think anything of it because I knew that’s what everybody does. That’s just what being a humanist like, is emulating other people. And it got so bad to where I was doing this thing where I would rehearse everything in my head first, approve it as being something that would be acceptable and liked by all and then I would say it out loud, which just meant that I hardly ever spoke.

Obviously it wasn’t working for me. None of this was working. But I wasn’t able to put two and two together because I was trying to be a freelance designer. I was struggling to get clients. I was operating out of fear mostly that I wouldn’t get clients, that I wouldn’t get paid or wouldn’t be able to pay my bills. And it was just a struggle and I never really had made the connection that those things were related to one another. And eventually what happened was I luckily moved to New York city, which I don’t want to go on some tangent about how everybody should move to New York. That’s not important. I don’t think anybody should. But the thing that was really powerful to me about living in New York is we all know the stereotype of what New Yorkers are like.

They’re pretty loud and crass and don’t really care about your feelings. Everybody’s just in a hurry. And for me, I was this very self conscious person that was very curated and practicing everything I said in my head when I got there. And the wonderful thing about New Yorkers was that everybody in New York is doing such interesting things that people look very different there, every person you look at looks like a totally unique human, people are weird and strange. And if somebody strange and weird walks by, New Yorkers just ignore them. They all just ignore each other. And that was so important for me because I got to see all these people that looked unlike people I had ever seen before. And it made me feel a little bit safer to explore who I was and try to wear something unusual or do my hair a different way, or try out different things with my personality and showcasing who I was.

And the reaction from New York Yorkers was that they just ignored me. They gave me no attention. They didn’t point out if I was doing anything unusual, they just continued on with their lives. And that’s exactly what I needed to explore who I was. And it was all about having a safe space of new friends around me that let me be myself without judgment at all. And it was so helpful for me. And so I just tiptoed my way into figuring out who I was and being myself out loud for people to see. And then of course what happened was the perceived outcome I had in my head of everybody’s going to judge me. They’re going to make fun of me if I do this, they’re going to not like me. Of course, that didn’t happen. So it just slowly retrained my brain to realise that I’m an adult now and I can be myself and I could do what I want to do and I can do what I’ve been wanting to do my whole life and other adults don’t care. They’re too busy worrying about themselves.

So really just through the practice of being myself a little bit more and a little bit more and realising that it was okay, was so helpful for me. And eventually over time of doing it more and more and more, I got hooked and realised that the more that I was doing this weird stuff that my brain just wanted me to be doing, the more work I got. I was able to find a visual style that was really reflective of who I am. And clients just came, whenever I had a recognisable unique style, I got a lot more work and I made more friends that were in line with who I actually am. And it just made me also feel amazing about myself to finally identify who I am and be that person out loud as loudly as possible.

So today what it looks like is now I don’t live in New York anymore. I live somewhere else and I have a house and I decorate my house in a style that’s really reflective of who I am. I try not to follow trends anymore. I dress in a way that adheres to my personal style guide as well. And I make work and I start businesses and I do stuff that makes me money. That’s a total reflection of what I uniquely have to offer the world. So I’m really just focusing now on ways in which I could be that as an example, so that I can to lift other people up and help them to define what makes them different from other people and help them to find a career or a personal style that’s a reflection of that.

Ian Paget: That was absolutely fascinating. And I know that there will be listeners that will probably relate with that. I know I do too, because I know a lot of people struggle with personal branding. And I think one of the reasons why they struggle is because a big part of that is knowing who you are and what makes you you, and what makes you unique and putting yourself out there is scary. I know with the logo geek brand I’ve been building, when I first put it out there, I’ve tried to be all serious and all professional. And there’s still an element of that in there because I think that’s part of who I am, but I do know I need to inject a little bit more of myself and everything that I’m doing. So it’s inspiring to see what you’ve done.

One big question I do have… I know you got to a point where you worked out who you are and you started to accept who you was, but then you started to find out that unique style of work for yourself that allowed you to get clients. What was it that you did to find the type of work that you were enjoying? Was it just a case of experimenting and trying stuff?

Meg Lewis: Yeah. And I had been working for a few years, maybe four or five years as a freelancer before I found out any of this. So it took me a long time and before I found out all of this information about myself, I was just taking on any client I could get. So it was like a lot of medical brochures or a website for a yarn company. And it was just everything, I would just take it all because I was afraid that work wouldn’t come otherwise. So I was operating that way and would find that all of my clients, all my friends would always say, Meg, you have such a specific style and I couldn’t see what it was at all. And it led to a lot of relationships with clients that just didn’t go well because my style didn’t match their brand.

So I was designing in a really fun, personable style for medical corporations and pharmaceutical companies. And that just led to me getting fired a lot because I wasn’t able to complete designs that they liked. And it was very frustrating for me and made me feel horrible about myself. And so eventually as I was discovering who I was and getting very excited about that, I had to think about what I want to be doing when it comes to work. And so I did an audit of all the clients I had worked with and decided to pick apart all the relationships that I loved the most and what I liked the most about them. And a lot of times it was the relationships I had that were the most successful were usually working with people that liked their job, which just meant that they had a company that had an excellent company culture or brand that really cared about them as humans.

And that’s when I realised that I just really wanted to be working with companies like that. And this was at a time in design history when things were just starting to turn from serious to playful. And you remember this I’m sure, for a long time design had to be very serious to be taken seriously. And brands wanted to look authoritative, dry in order for their users to take them seriously. And I luckily was fighting against that for a long time, but eventually once I realised that I just needed to embrace that my style was playful and fun and personable, I was able to shout that out loud. And it was right at the great time when design took a turn and brands started to want fun and playful. And of course, before that, it would have been very hard for me to market myself that way, because brands would be like, we don’t want character illustrations, we’re trying to sell something here.

But now of course, everybody wants that. So I was able to finally identify what I loved the most about working with the companies I liked working with. And I realised that the companies I loved working with the most, just seemed happy. And so that’s what I decided to do. I made this huge leap at one point in my career where I said that I am a designer who only works with happy companies. And I put that language up on my website. I changed my social media over to say that stuff. And I made sure to showcase this extremely personable, positive, uplifting, friendly design, as much as possible so that I could really prove to people that this is the work that I do.

And I was so scared when I did that, because I knew that I would be shutting out, maybe I don’t know, 90% of people who would be coming my way for design, but I thought at the time, you know what, I’ll just change everything over to this language for a month. And I’ll see how it feels. If things are crashing and burning, I’ll just change it back. And of course, as you can probably tell, I put it that way for a month. And I got more client inquiries because I was marketing myself as a unique lead positioned individual with a thing. And so at the time I became the only designer that was working in this really playful and friendly space. And so everybody was resonating with that and clients were running my way because I was the person that was offering this very specific service.

And so I learned that if I could just take what made my work and my personality special and really communicate it clearly, then I could get a heck of a lot more opportunities. And they were opportunities that were in line with what I actually wanted to be doing, which seems so simple. But even today, whenever I’m coaching or working with individuals who are trying to identify this for themselves, everybody’s so scared to do that. Everyone’s so scared to position themselves really specifically because they know they’re going to be scaring away most people, but the reality is that you’re actually just attracting the right people, even though it’s a smaller percentage.

Ian Paget: That’s fascinating because I spoken a number of times about niching down and you can really think of industry sectors, but in your case, you’ve gone down the route of working out the type of style that you want to do. And working out that it’s happy company. So it’s a type of company rather than a niche as such. How do you know who a happy company is?

Meg Lewis: Over the course of the years, this has changed a lot. And to me, for a long time, I was working specifically in this happy company space. And I still truly love to do that work. For me, a happy company was like a company who’s working to make the world a happier, healthier place either through their company culture or through the product or service that they’re offering. And as my work has evolved over the years, companies that are not happy at all have come to me and said, we want to be happier. We want to start new initiatives or projects that are actually helping to better the world. And so I’m able to come into them and work with them on those projects.

And luckily for me, we’re at a trend in business that every company needs to seem this way, at least a little bit and needs to be this way and helping to make the world a better place, at least in some way or else they’re just going to crash and burn.

So it’s been a really nice time for me that way, yes, niching down is a really great point. And this is the same thing, it’s just a different approach because for me, it’s like, rather than being a skill based niche designer, I became more of a value based designer. So if your brand matched my values and we shared this mission together, then we could work together. So I think it’s great to have a skill based niche as well. There’s a lot of ways that we can niche down and I think that values are definitely one of them.

Ian Paget: Yeah, for sure. It’s not something I ever really considered till I looked at your website. I think you’re targeting on strings a little bit because nobody wants to be an unhappy company.

Meg Lewis: Yeah.

Ian Paget: So it’s a nice angle to come in at. At that time when you made your mind up that you wanted to focus on this type of work, what was it that you actually did? Did you change your portfolio in any way? Did you pick out pieces that had that happy feel to it or was it just that was the style of work that you were doing at that time?

Meg Lewis: Yeah, both. So I would say that the work I loved the most that I was excited to put in my portfolio in the first place was all really in line with that mission. And that’s how I came upon that mission for myself was because that was the work I liked making the most. But I think that it’s really important, it was very important for me to be clear about my message of this is who I am. I’m a brand and marketing designer who works with happy companies to make the world a happier place. That was the statement I was making about myself. So I needed to make sure that I was proving that statement with everything that I showed, in everything that I did on my website and all the language that I was using. So I made sure to use keywords that put that message across.

I made sure that all the projects I was showing were in line with what I was saying about myself, because if I had a bunch of dry serious work mixed in with all the fun, playful, personable work, it would just muddle my mission and what I was saying about myself and the way I was positioning myself. And I think for a lot of people, that’s a scary place to be in because I didn’t have much work that looked like it. So it was like, I have two or three projects. And I know a lot of people are in the same situation where you’re like, well, I really like working on this project, but I really don’t have that much to show. And I think a lot of it is just about being confident.

So if you could be really confident about the statements you’re making about yourself and you know this is the right path for you, you really don’t have to show that much to show what you can. And for me, I’ve always been a huge advocate for making opportunities for yourself rather than waiting for someone else to come along and believe in you blindly, even though you don’t have any proof that you could do something, it takes a long time and a very special relationship for somebody to stumble onto you and say, we know you’ve never done this before, but we really believe in you. So we want to give you the opportunity, that rarely happens. So I’m a huge fan of making opportunities for yourself first whether it’s through a side project or through just a little collaboration that you reach out to a brand you love, find ways to make things happen for yourself, where you’re not relying on anybody else. And that will help you have a little bit more visual proof or statistical proof. So that way you can showcase what you do to the world and have more to show.

Ian Paget: Yeah. You know what, I think that’s something that’s really important. And I actually recently did an episode with a friend of mine who was lucky enough to get a job with a premier league football club. It was always his goal. And it’s been amazing watching him work because at the age of 22, he’s been able to work with one of the top 10 football clubs in the UK-

Meg Lewis: That’s amazing.

Ian Paget: … which is one of his dreams and the way he did that was exactly what you said, looking for opportunities. So doing voluntary work for local football clubs and building up his portfolio. So when he did go in for that interview, he could show the type of work he did. And in my case, when I started what I’m doing with blogger geek and the logo design side of things, when I first started, I had very few logos, but by sharing that I can do that, that’s how you get work. So I think that’s one thing that I love about you and what you’re doing is that you do look for those opportunities because, I was in a video, I don’t know how long ago, but I watched a video that you did.

I think it might have been with Adobe where you’d wanted to get into pattern design, and you didn’t have anything in your portfolio. So you created a whole online store selling products and that eventually led to some client work. Would you mind talking a little bit more about that as well? Because I think this is a really good point for listeners to understand if you do want to work on a specific type of thing, make your own opportunities.

Meg Lewis: Absolutely. And I’m hooked on this way of working. The specific thing that you’re referencing is, yeah, it was about a year ago. I was very interested in learning how to design patterns for products. So like textile patterns and things like that. And I had no experience doing that. I’ve mostly been a digital designer my whole career. So anything print related, I’m just confused about and don’t know what I’m doing. So I was like, I wanted to do it and I wanted to do it for companies and for brands. But again, who’s just going to believe in me and assume that I will be able to do this without any proof. So I did a thing called Society Six, which is an online store where any designer can go on and upload designs. And then Society Six turns those designs into, oh my gosh, everything, towels, bedding, rugs, throw pillows, coasters, phone cases, everything.

And they produce all the stuff and just ship it out to the customers that order it. And then you make a commission. So very low risk platform for me to try this out and see if I liked it. So I made a bunch of patterns. I learned a lot about what patterns work, what decisions look really nice, what decisions don’t look nice. I learned about a lot about what patterns clients or people, audiences love versus which ones they don’t like. I’ve just learned a lot of information and took it in. And through this practice, it only took me a couple of weeks total to go through this process. And I learned so much, and then I had this beautiful example of these patterns and products that I could design patterns for. And so I posted it up on the internet and I’m always really transparent and honest.

And I said, “Hey, I want to do work like this.” So I created this shot for this very specific reason to see if I liked it and to see if I could do it and I can, and I love it. So I just showcased more of that work. And of course, a month or two later, I started getting work like that because I had this beautiful example that I just worked on over my free time and used tools that were at my disposal, which was Society Six, which is a free platform. And I used my computer and so I was able to make that happen for myself. And then I got paid opportunities for it. And that’s happening for me right now as well. I’m always doing something like this. I’m always like, okay, what next? What can I do next? And how can I make this happen for myself first?

So right now there have been a lot of opportunities recently, where brands have been interested in working with me on a content basis. I’m trying to think of an example, like a bandage company will come to me and say, “Hey, we want to send you one of our bandages. Can you design something where the bandages at the centre of the design and you’re creating a world around and we’ll put that on our social media and on our advertising channels and we’ll pay you for it.” And so a lot of companies had been approaching me and saying we’re interested, but we haven’t really seen any other work like this. Can you show us some examples? And I’d be like, I don’t have any examples.

So right now you, if you go on my Instagram, you’ll see a little bit of me doing this right now for myself. So I was like, I really want to work in this space, but I don’t have any examples of myself having done work like this, where a physical product is woven into my design work. So I’ve been focusing some of my time this year on just doing social media posts and stuff for myself of showcasing products I love, where I put the product in and design something around it, or maybe there’s an illustration or type around it and I’m doing it because I want to see if I enjoy it. I want to see if I can do it. But I also am trying to prove to these companies that I can do it so that they’ll pay me to do it as well.

So this is a way that I love working in, and I’m always trying to grow and change my career and go into new areas that I have never done before and doing it in a way where I can be in total control of what opportunities I get is the safest and most exciting way for me to go.

Ian Paget: I think we’re really lucky now because when I started out as a graphic designer, only 15 years ago, but even then there wasn’t social media really. I remember Myspace, but I think Facebook started when I started in a full time job which has probably any stayed for 10 years ago. And now you can pretty much create your own opportunities. I don’t think you could do that so easily about 15, 10, 15 years ago, because we’ve got all these online platforms now. When I just started out, I felt like I had to go and work for a company. I wasn’t aware that you could pretty much create your own job and create your own opportunities and stuff like that.

But because we have social media, we have all of these platforms, we have all these different ways. as a graphic designer you can easily create a website, you start posting your staff. It’s so easy now to create your own opportunities. So whatever type of work you want, I think as long as you apply your mentality of, I don’t have that kind of work, I’m going to work on something and you do it all for free, for yourself. And then you put it out there and having that work out there has created those opportunities, which is awesome.

Meg Lewis: Absolutely. And I hear a lot of people with the mindset of, I don’t work for free, my time is valuable. And I get it, I understand that argument and it makes sense to me, but I just have this extremely curious personality where I love to spend my free time learning new things and trying new things out. And going into new territories and growing and evolving and I think that’s really exciting to me. And actually, it’s much more palatable for me to do it all on my own and do it for myself because it’s this wonderful opportunity for me to learn more about myself rather than doing it for free for a company. So if a company was like, we don’t know, we’re skeptical, so we won’t pay you, but please make these things for us. It would be so much less fun and motivating for me.

Because then I’d have them giving me feedback and telling me, no change this. And also doing that for free would make me feel resentful. So whenever I’m just by myself doing something and trying things out and learning and growing on my own, it’s a delightful self discovery process where I just learned so much about myself along the way. And so I’m a really loving the process of doing it all alone, all by myself first and then showing it to brands and then allowing them to pay me and then have a little bit more say after that.

So this method works really well for me. But I think that you have to be extremely self motivated, and I know a lot of people are not. So I know a lot of people really struggle with starting and a lot of people just get in their own way so much that they can’t seem to start this stuff. And it’s so important that you just get out of your own dang way and start the process because the starting is the hardest part for sure. And once you get used to it, it becomes so fun and so exciting.

Ian Paget: Do you have any tips on self motivating? You’re doing a lot of stuff. Researching topics for this interview, there were so many things that was coming up. You’re doing so many different things. So there must be something that’s in your head or some way of thinking that’s driving you forward. Do you have any tips to help people that are wanting to start their own thing? And now because of the COVID-19 situation, probably loads of people have the ideal time to do it.

Meg Lewis: Oh my God, yes.

Ian Paget: Do you have any tips to give people a bit of a nudge to get started on some project that they’ve been dying to work on?

Meg Lewis: Absolutely. So there are two parts here. There’s the part of people who just don’t even know what they can do or what they can make with their free time or what they can offer the world. And I think that’s why it looks like I do so much because my career is just a bunch of small things smushed together that make one big career. And what I’m doing really is I’ve assessed every part of my personality of what makes me who I am. I’ve assessed every single skill that I have and I’ve made a career that utilises everything.

So if I’m like, oh gosh, there’s this personality trait of mine that I have, that I’ve always had my whole life. And I’m not really utilising that at all in my career. I then try to figure out how I can start a new business or create a new offering or do something on my own that utilises that personality trait.

And then there’s also my skill set. So whenever I come through all the skills that I have, that I’m really good at a lot of them don’t have to do with design. They’re seemingly unrelated to my career, but I’ve found ways to utilise those and start making new things that takes advantage of everything that I have to offer. So I think for most people, if they’re looking for just a jumpstart on how they can identify what they can make for the world, I highly recommend you just do some list-making of figuring out what about your personality makes you unique? What are those personality traits you have, and then go through your skill set and make sure that you’re utilising all of that stuff in your career. And if you’re not, then you’re doing a huge disservice to you and the world.

And I think whenever we have jobs that don’t allow us to utilise all of the things that make us amazing, that’s when we start feeling unfulfilled or we start being curious about what else is out there for us. And so it’s really important that we utilise everything that makes us amazing in what we can offer for their world. So that’s a really big tip. And then I think the other issue here is, you have an idea or you have the thing that you want to do, but you can’t seem to get started. You can’t seem to make the first leap into doing it. I could give advice all day long and it wouldn’t help people to start because starting something is the worst. It’s so hard. And so to me, what I would say to people is to assess areas, always assess areas where you’re getting in your own way, where fear, you’re just afraid to do something so you’re not allowing yourself to do it.

And once you just make a tiny little step towards the direction of starting, that is huge. That’s a huge accomplishment and whatever you can do starting today to get yourself forward and to get yourself through to starting is all I can ask of anybody because it’s so scary out there. And it’s so hard to get started. And there’s nothing anybody can say that will make anybody on their own take action. So there’s really not much I can say to get anybody to actually start, but I think just having the mindset of, Meg told me to do it so I have to do it now, if that helps people, I hope it does. But for me, fear drives us in so many ways and prevents us from doing all kinds of stuff. And I’m also in the middle of that all the time.

And this year I’m working through my biggest one. I think the biggest reason why I was getting in my own way in the past and still am, is I am so terrified of reviews and people telling me what they think about me in a public forum. So I specifically have never had a YouTube videos because I’m afraid of the comments. Never until this year had a podcast because I was afraid of the reviews. I was so scared that everybody hated me and I didn’t want to have to read that. So I completely stopped myself and got in my own way from doing a lot of the stuff that I really wanted to do or all these things I had to offer the world. I just wouldn’t offer them because I was so scared. And this year I did it, I launched two podcasts and reviews started pouring in.

And of course 90% of them are great. And of course there was one or two reviews of people that just hated me and ripped me apart. And it destroyed me, but I got over it. I got through it, I made my way through it. And there was more good than there was bad, far more. And the perceived outcome I had in my head of my world ending because someone hates me, that didn’t happen. I just kept going. I kept making the podcast. I realised that this person had issues probably with themselves. I wasn’t doing anything wrong and they were taking something else out on me and it really had nothing to do with me. And so once you start getting used to dipping your toe in and trying out, pushing through the fear, you’ll teach yourself and retrain your brain that it’s okay. Terrible things may happen. They probably won’t. But if they do you get through it, you’re very strong. And so yes, those are my tips.

Ian Paget: I think they’re fantastic tips. And I’m so happy to hear that you took that leap and started doing your own thing with all the podcasts. I didn’t realise it was so recent that you started a lot of what you’re doing. And I’m going to add to something that you said, because I think when you start to create content like this podcast or you start to create forums and communities and stuff like that, you do naturally become the target for people. I’ve had it quite frequent that some people have said some horrible things for no reason, but exactly what you said, it’s nothing that you did. It’s just them having a bad day. And it’s best to focus on the positives, the people that you are helping, because I can tell just in the 37 minutes that we’ve been speaking now, you provided so many great tips, so much good advice.

You’re so confident in who you are and it’s awesome to think that probably only a few years ago you had doubts and insecurities and you’ve been able to break through those. And I think it’s really important. I wanted to go back to the personal branding stuff because there was something I noticed that you do. And I know you do it intentionally. The way you dress, the way you pose for pictures, the colours that you use, a lot of what you’re doing is very intentional, very deliberate. You’re doing it for a reason to help build your personal brand. And I always find this type of thing surprising and really fascinating. So how are you going about choosing what you’re wearing to help your personal brand? How does that work?

Meg Lewis: So it’s interesting because my guttural reaction to personal brand in the past, even up until last year has always been like, yuck. How dare someone be so curated about who they are that they’re just like a fake version of themselves. And once I realised that, oh my gosh, once I know enough about who I am, I can translate all of the amazing qualities that make me who I am into visuals and I can show it to the world and I can have, because I’m a person that is unlike anybody who exists, I can have a visual style that looks unlike anybody who exists and in doing so and in visually showing the world who I am, it helps me to be seen in a way that is impossible otherwise. It helps people to understand who I am just by looking at me, looking at my home, looking at my work. And that is so exciting.

So for me, it’s not about being so fixed in some boundary box that I’m unable to grow and change and explore who I am. It’s more about putting visuals to all of the things that have been true about myself my whole life, and those things are more likely to be true as I continue through my life. So for example, my visual style, my personal style is a reflection of showcasing visually my unique personality. But it’s also showcasing the inspiration that I’ve had that has remained constant my whole life. So for example, when I went through this exercise for myself, I just made lists again about what is it about my personality that makes me who I am? What are the things that have inspired me whenever I was a kid, that I’m still equally as into and inspired by today?

And then I just popped those things, turn them into visuals and popped them up on my screen and made sure that I didn’t look at anybody else’s design work while I was doing this practice, which I think is very important because then I would be influenced by others work. For me, I love change so much. I love it so much. That’s a huge part of my personality. I love moving. I love changing my environment. That’s why I have this career where I’m changing what I’m doing all day long throughout the day, and constantly adding more things because I love change. So I had to think, what is it about change that I love? And for me it’s changing seasons. I love changing facial expressions. I love emotion and how that can change so quickly. I love the way colours change depending on what environment they’re in.

These are things that I love about change and have my whole life, which is very important. So I popped images of all of that up on my screen. Then I went through my other unique personality traits, like the fact that I’ve never ever taken anything really seriously ever. I had to figure out what about that is so important to me. And what about that throughout my whole life has been important. So I throw images up of that and I just kept going with my personality traits.

And then I went to my lifelong per points of inspiration and I said, okay, what was I really inspired by as a kid that I’m still inspired by today? A lot of that is comedy actors, a lot of silent but extremely emotive people. I still remain Mr. Bean’s number one fan. When I was a kid, I loved mimes and I still do. I loved clowns and circus arts. And so I just took all these images and I threw them up. And then I zoomed out and looked at all of this visual information that I had just gotten and put it all together. And I noticed some major through lines. There was a lot of black and white contrast. There was a lot of bright blocks of colour. Very specific colour palette was emerging throughout the changing seasons I was seeing the same colours when I was looking at the circus stuff and the clowns.

There was so much there, there were so many themes, there were so many emotive faces with harsh contrast on them. And so that’s how I was able to start creating a visual style guide for myself. So that way I could create work that was so representative of everything that it makes me who I am and everything that has created and fuelled and inspired me throughout my life. And so what that means is that I work with a lot of black and white, with large pops of colour. I use a lot of positive wacky, weird emotion, emotive faces and bodies were so important throughout all the images of things that inspire me. So I make sure that that’s included too. So anytime, you mentioned head shots, anytime people take photos of me, I make sure that I’m showing my style through the photos I take.

I make sure that my work showcases, these little thematic elements of minds and circus stuff and emotion, and I make sure that I’m not taking anything too seriously with the work that I make. So I have this style guide that I’m able to dress by, I’m able to make visual graphic design work by, I’m able to decorate my home by. And it’s such a way for me to basically feel seen by myself whenever I dress myself now. And it makes me feel so confident because it’s who I am and what I was meant to be wearing this whole time. It just took me 30 years to figure this stuff out because before I was wearing brown pants and why don’t I feel great in these brown pants? I like them on other people.

And now I’m wearing these wacky black and white patterns with huge neon earrings. And I have never felt better in my life because I’m dressing in a way that’s representative of who I am and everything that has made me who I am today. So it has made me feel amazing about myself, but it’s also helped to allow other people to see me and understand exactly who I am.

Ian Paget: I really love that. I know you’ve gone through a couple of different exercises because I know earlier you mentioned about creating a list of things you can do and that’s something I definitely need to do myself because as I told you earlier, I’ve been full time freelance now for what? Two months. And I know that there’s so many skills I’m ignoring, so I need to do that. And I love the idea of pulling together images of what makes you you, and building your identity based on that. I think that’s a really nice way to look at it.

So you’re not creating this fictional company, so to speak, you’re working out who you are and you’re putting a lot of you in your own identity, which I think is awesome. It is similar to something I did a few years ago. I started something called a future board and you’d pin up everything of where you want to be, but I actually like this approach that you said, I might do that myself and do some self discovery, which I think would be worth doing.

Meg Lewis: Yeah. And I think for me, and I think for most people that go through this exercises, it validates so many of the decisions you’ve already been making because before, I was doing a lot of the stuff anyway, but I couldn’t tell you why. I had a style that was always peeking through my work and that everybody could always recognise, but I couldn’t really recognise it myself. And I couldn’t explain why I was making these decisions. And now it just helps me to be so much more confident about exactly why I do things the way I do. And it just helps to validate who I am to myself and makes me feel really special. But also even though I have such a distinct personal style now, other people might see that and be inspired by it and make work that looks similar to it or dress similarly.

And a lot of times I get people that message me and they’re like, look at this person’s work, they stole your style. And my reaction is usually like, I look at the work and I think there’s no way my brain would have made work that looked like that. So there’s truly no way that anybody can steal my style unless they’re copying it verbatim. But I think it’s important to note that there’s so much meaning behind the work that I make and every decision that I make. So even if somebody was trying to copy, my styler was largely influenced by it. There’s no way they know about the mime thing or Mr. Bean or… So there’s no way that they could truly copy and recreate all of the meaning behind the work that I make.

Ian Paget: Well, that’s a really nice way to look at it. And I think on the plus side, it’s actually a massive compliment that people love your work so much that they’re inspired by it to create work that’s similar. Now I want to change the topic a little bit because I read about your business Ghostly Ferns. And I’m keen to hear more about this because I’ve not heard of a business quite like this, but you describe it as a collective of designers that allows you to get hired like an agency. It sounds like a really cool idea, but can you share exactly what this is and how it works?

Meg Lewis: Yes. So Ghostly Ferns has been around for over 10 years now, it’s the first business I ever started. And it means so much to all of us. We have been around our whole careers together. So we’ve seen each other grow and change over the years. And really what happened was, this was when I was in New York, we met and this is my safe space, these are my people. We met at shared workspace. We were all freelancers working alongside one another, and we all did different things. So one of us product designer, me, a brand designer. We have an illustrator and we have a hand lettering artist. And we were just friends that were working alongside each other, doing our freelance work next to each other. And so in that practice, we got to hang out all the time.

We spent all of our days together. But we also got to see how each of us worked with clients and we knew that, okay, they’re all very responsible meet deadlines, are great at communication. And we just would lean over to each other’s desks and help each other through difficult times. We would write difficult emails together of trying to navigate awkward client situations and help each other through that stuff and help each other price work together. It just became a really supportive group. And then we realised if we band forces together, then we’ll operate a little bit like an agency, because we can do it all. If we just band together and start working on projects together. So that’s really what we did where a group, and this is still us today, even though we live all over the place.

Now we live in Minnesota and still New York and Laura now lives in Manchester. Now we can call ourselves an international collective, which feels fancy. But what we do now is we work, I would say 80% of the time as individual freelancers, but every so often clients and big brands will come to us as a group and say, we want to do a huge project and we want to hire all of you to make it happen. And that’s really exciting for us, but most of the time, well, how we operate is I’ll be working on a design project and then the client will say, okay, well now I need this really complex hero illustration.

And if it’s not in a style that I can do, then I grab Laura who’s in our group, who’s the illustrator. And Laura pops in for a second. And it’s nice for the client because they’re just paying Ghostly Ferns. They’re not paying me and then having to onboard a second contractor. And it’s not like this complicated, legal thing for them. So it’s just a nice way to operate. And really, it’s just an excuse for us as friends to work together more often, which we love.

Ian Paget: This is so cool. So do you treat it like an actual registered business because if I understand right, you’re all independent freelances, but they say only when you need to work together on a bigger project that you do are under Ghostly Ferns?

Meg Lewis: Yeah. Exactly. And Ghostly Ferns is such an interesting thing because it works really well for our group because our group, Ghostly Ferns has a company has never been interested in making a profit. We pay each person the amount that they made based on how much work they put into each project. So it’s not like Ghostly for instance takes a cut. We’re very inclusive and we make sure that we’re all getting paid what we’re worth. And that works out really well for us, but we’re not trying to grow, Ghostly Ferns isn’t trying to add more people or double our numbers next year. We’re just operating as an excuse to allow us to work together more often. And that works really nicely for us. So it’s just like a nice little thing to have on the side. A nice little support system to have in addition to being alone as a freelancer.

Ian Paget: So it’s like pulling together friends that you know that you could collaborate with at some point, but you have it operated under a business name?

Meg Lewis: Yes. exactly.

Ian Paget: That’s cool. It’s cool. So how does it work if someone contacts Ghostly Ferns separately versus contacting you directly, does it operate in a different way? How would it work?

Meg Lewis: Yeah. Well, and the nice thing about our group is that we’re friends who just love and support one another. So we’re not awkwardly fighting over jobs and it helps that we all do different things. So if a client comes to Ghostly Ferns email address, and they’re like, hey, I have a brand and I’d like you to work on it. I’m the brand designer. So I usually am like, okay, I got this one. And then if the project needs illustration while I’m talking to them or even in the middle of the project, if we need something else, then I’ll bring in one of the other Ghostly Ferns.

But if a client comes directly to my inbox and they’re like, hey, we want to work with you on a brand. Then it’s the exact same process. There’s not much different there. But if a client comes to the Ghostly Ferns inbox and is like, I don’t know what I need, but I have this campaign. Then usually whoever has the most free time at the time will be the point person and say, okay, I’ll take the first meeting with them and find out what they need.

And then they work to hash out a plan with that client to figure out exactly how many of our team they need on that project. Because we’re also probably a little too nice in that we don’t want to charge clients more than we need to. So we usually charge the client based on how many people need to work on it. And sometimes it’s a huge project and we all need to work on it. So we’re able to charge them more. But again, the company itself isn’t keeping any of that profit, it’s going directly into the pockets of everybody who’s working on it.

Ian Paget: That’s really cool. It’s fascinating. And I think the main reason why it works so well is because you all have different skillsets.

Meg Lewis: Yes.

Ian Paget: I think it would probably become a little bit more difficult if there was multiple brand identity people in there because you might end up fighting for the work.

Meg Lewis: Exactly.

Ian Paget: So I think providing it’s all complimentary, then that structure seems to work. So it’s the first time I’ve had someone work in this way. So I was fascinated to hear more. So thanks for sharing.

Meg Lewis: Yeah, of course.

Ian Paget: Now we’ve pretty much done nearly an hour and I’m conscious that you have your meetings. So I think now’s probably a good time to wrap up the interview, but there’s been so much in this. And I think all the ideas for the lists and the planning, pulling together, the images and all that stuff, I think that will really help a lot of people find who they are. So thank you so much Meg for coming on, it’s been really great to chat with you.

Meg Lewis: Thank you for having me.