We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cory Say Senior Designer and Adjunct Professor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cory Say below.
Hi Cory Say, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.
I love this question. I don’t think that I can fully say “I developed the ability to take a risk.” However, at the risk of sounding preachy, I think this stems from what I learned in my faith. Messages on fear, and dangers of succumbing to them really made an impact on me. Fear can be a powerful force that stops you from moving. When faced with a risk, you are only anxious because you are already considering it and are already weighing it. If I do this thing there is a possibility that it won’t work out and life would be miserable, but there is a possibility it could work out and life could be better. Now, please know that I know there are bad opportunities we shouldn’t take because logically it doesn’t make since. I am only focusing on the good ones. When you take a step on a risk where it seems risky but the outcome has a potential of being awesome, check with your inner circle. Check with the people who mean the most to you and will not tell what you want to hear. Then make the decision. It’s glorious and empowering. After your first one, I think it gets easier. You learn each time and I do think it gets better. Don’t let fear hold you back because you could be missing out on an opportunity of a lifetime. If the reason you don’t want to do a thing is because fear, do it.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I work full time as a Senior Designer/Artist at Hallmark Cards Inc. and I am a part time Adjunct Professor at a university in Texas, East Texas A&M University Commerce. I love both jobs! At Hallmark, I am now a lettering artist where I get to offer my talents to all of the brands product categories. Over the years, working as a designer, I have found things that I love and one of them is lettering. It’s awesome I get to do the thing I love everyday, very grateful for that. As a professor, I love being a mentor and sharing what I do and I do it to help others succeed.
I also freelance, what’s great about freelance is I only take on the projects that I am most excited about. I get to dictate what I take on and turn down the others. The most recent projects I worked on as a freelancer was a calendar poster and tote bag that I designed for Half Priced Books. Both were extremely fun to design and illustrate. The poster was vintage circus themed where each circus act was a personification of certain type of reader. The tote bag was themed and illustrated in classic scifi/pulp magazine style, where the Alien demands “Take me to your Reader!”.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think the three things for me are grace, time and making mistakes.
For grace, we give and show others grace all of the time and we forget to show ourselves some. Breathe, and know that you got this.
For time, early on, I wanted to be good as the my friends were at design. They set the bar high and I wanted to be like them. It took me some time to learn this but I finally came to the realization that I can only be as good as I am right now, and that’s ok, that grace thing. So, give yourself time to grow.
For mistakes, mistakes are terrifying. As a student when you fail sometimes that can be costly. This is true for real life as well but in my experience, mistakes are more forgiving. Now, you do want to avoid them because is usually a cost attached but know that it’s not the end of the world and it is something to learn from. Sometimes they are necessary for us to grow, to move forward and learn from.
Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
Man, I would have to say my art teacher in high school, Julie Kerr. She guided my path to design. Also, I would have to say my professors at University of North Texas. They gave me a firm foundation to build my design career on. I still practice what they preached. I don’t know where I would be had I not gone to UNT and learned from them.
Contact Info:
- Website: corysay.com
- Instagram: @cory.say
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cory.say
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-say
- Other: https://www.behance.net/corysay
