Meet justin mirsch

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Justin Mirsch. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Justin below.

Justin, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

I’d have to say that I found my purpose, through experience and patience.
The patience to give myself time to learn new skills or hobbies I may not have been great at first try,
From a young age I always enjoyed drawing and art. Even though I wasn’t very good at it. But I always would try to take art classes in school, and then make it my major as I got older. Making it a career was proof enough for me this was my purpose and passion; to design and create.

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 do a wide range of graphic design work, but primarily branding. From logos, to website designs, apparel, etc.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great companies and great people along the way. It motivated me enough to want to try and brand myself the same way.

Creating a company from scratch and selling apparel online. Seemed simple enough. Oh how wrong I was. In a saturated market of designers, AI, and drop shipping, it makes things tough.

Luckily, I reached out to some friends about what they had done in the past for their apparel. I knew i liked the quality and wanted to see that reflected with my designs on it.

My friend and I teamed up and each built websites, sharing creative ideas, designs, and going through the whole process together.

Being an LA native, I wanted to play on that. West LA Clothing Crew, would be a meld of past and future work for an apparel company that is themed towards “westsiders” and relatable things around the city. Kind of like if @west_la_memes made their own apparel.
My friend went the route of creating his company, Almost Lucky Co. with the goal being, “dope shit. for dope people. from dope people”. (I think that’s actually on his ‘about’ page).

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?

1. Learning to not being too attached to things.
Sometimes I’d make a design and be determined that it’ll be used as a shirt design. Only to realize after spending days tweaking and changing the design, trying to make it work, only to create something after that was even better than before! It’s great to always try! But it’s important to when to know when to let go.

2. Patience
Give yourself time to learn. Don’t expect to get everything done all at once, right on the first try. Taking your time, breaking things down, having a plan, all things that will help you.

3. Believe in the end goal
So many times will you question if what you’re doing is the “right” thing. Or maybe it’s not your calling. But that’s where that patience from earlier comes in. Some may critique your work or career path, but that is yours to walk alone.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I believe that we always try to go in with 100% of our strengths.
If you’re a designer and want to always be a designer. You’re going to crush the design aspect of your job. But if they start asking you to implement graphics on their website, or you need to make print ready files and you’re only ever used to making digital assets; your going to start improving in those areas you didn’t do so well in before.
But say you’re a designer and want to open your own design firm, now you’re going to have to invest a lot of effort into learning the business side and entirely different world than you’re used to if you’re not prepared.

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Image Credits

Photography by @chiefleif

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