Meet Jill Labieniec

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

Hi Jill, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

Feelings related to our worth and self-esteem can be tricky to navigate as creatives. We often tie our creative output to our identity and view our worth as intrinsically linked to our creative success. I’ve spent a lot of my career wrestling with my identity as both a person and an artist, often believing that it was mentally healthier for me to view these as two separate identities. If I failed at art, who cares…I’m still a kind and cool human… right?
But what I’ve come to realize is that my art comes from within me, from my imagination and from a deep longing to create beauty in the world. This desire to shape the world I live in IS part of my identity. As long as I am working to create meaningful art through my own eyes, my worth won’t be impacted by others’ interpretation of that work.
At the end of the day, if I am seeking to create beauty for myself and those around me, I can’t fail – and that has been an incredibly freeing way to face the world.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

As a professional illustrator, I love helping brands tell their story through illustration & design! Art is such a powerful and underused tool that can add a unique perspective to products and packaging. Understanding a client’s needs, meeting them where they are at, and guiding them towards options that elevate their product is at the heart of everything I do. My whimsical prints and patterns have been used on all kinds of products–in all kinds of ways–from home decor and fabrics to books, stationery and editorial imagery.

I also run a small online shop where I strive to create thoughtfully sourced products crafted with story and heart. The artwork I produce for my own line of products is inspired by daydreams. Not the practical kind, but the big fantastic daydreams we allowed our minds to travel to as children. My biggest hope is that my art allows people to escape and drift off to some magical place—even if it’s just for a brief moment. We all deserve to give ourselves space to rest, daydream and grow.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

These are the three biggest lessons I have learned from running a creative business.

The place between where you are and where you want to be can feel frustrating and painful. It’s taken me a long time to be able to see that place as an opportunity for growth. The best advice I have is to keep practicing and make space for your voice. The world has enough of what everyone else is already doing.

When you start something new, you’re not going to know how to do everything. Nobody does. But you are going to have to move forward regardless and take uncomfortable leaps into the unknown. You’ll be brilliant at some things and make a mess of others. You’ll learn. You’ll never feel 100% ready or prepared for what’s next but you’ll move through it the best you can.

If we are lucky, we have a lifetime of learning ahead of us but the lessons we teach ourselves are some of the very best! Teachers and institutions can offer us skills and techniques but WE teach ourselves how to use those tools to create joy in our lives and in our work. We teach ourselves to see beauty, to push through challenges, to find unique ways of sharing our story. We teach ourselves to put in the lifetime of hours that it takes to show up for our craft. We teach ourselves to be kind through our failures and how to create our own path and definition of success.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

When I left my full-time job to focus on my freelance career, I thought the biggest challenges would be isolation and fluctuating income. Don’t get me wrong, those are very real challenges. But what surprised me is how disconnected I feel from the actual work. I went from being involved in every aspect of a product’s development, from conception to launch, to my current role, where I primarily develop art. I’ve come to realize that I work best when I have a deep understanding of the brands I collaborate with, the opportunity to shape the project with data-driven insights, and a team of folks who are equally invested in seeing the project succeed. As an in-house designer, I could bring more to the table than just design. As a freelancer, I’m only being asked and compensated for the design. I look forward to finding clients with whom I can build deeper relationships and begin to feel more connected to the work.

Creatives have so much to offer beyond the visual impact of our output. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but I think as businesses become more reliant on generative technology to create visual solutions, the intellectual value of creativity will be appreciated in a new light.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jill-labieniec.com/
• Instagram: @jill.labieniec
• Linkedin: jill-labieniec