Photo © Gerhard Kassner
While Hische admits that she is probably best known as “The Drop-Cap Girl”, she has many strings to her bow, and her talk resonated with the sense of someone wise beyond their years (she is still under 30!). As well as her lettering and illustrative works, Hische is also an accomplished web designer and developer, and firmly believes that digital designers need to learn (at least front-end) code.
Indeed, with her eclectic skill-set and tireless work ethic, it is no wonder that Hische is so successful. When not working on client projects, she is constantly creating new personal projects such as ‘The Daily Drop Cap’ (her first side project), ‘Don’t Fear the Internet’ (basic HTML and CSS for non-web designers) and ‘Should I Work for Free?’. While showing the audience at TYPO these projects, Hische explained how her love for creating resources that can be genuinely useful for people (’Mom, This is How Twitter Works’ and ‘Inker Linker’ being two examples).
Jessica Hische is a letterer and illustrator best known for her personal projects Daily Drop Cap and the Should I Work for Free? flowchart. Just five years out of college, she’s been named one of Print Magazine’s New Visual Artists and an ADC Young Gun, one of Forbes 30 under 30 in Art and Design, and currently serves on the TDC board of Directors. She has been profiled in many publications, has traveled the world speaking about lettering and illustration, and has probably consumed enough coffee to power a small nation.
These projects allow her to step outside the realm of lettering and really force herself to think, rather than working under art direction.
Photo © Gerhard Kassner
Hische introduced two of her personal mottos to the TYPO audience. The first, “Procrastiworking” (the act of doing personal work when you should be working on something else), drew a big laugh from the audience, while the second “Make Things You Wish Existed” was nothing short of inspiring; “… Make things you wish existed. The worst thing that can happen is this thing you want now exists. The best thing that can happen is people might actually like it!”.
Hische concluded her talk, and indeed the TYPO 2012 conference, on a serious note, by leaving us with an important message; the need for us to “advocate and educate” in order for people to value the craft of design. By actively engaging and educating people about “how crazy it is to design a typeface” or “why you can’t do a logo for $100”, Hische ended the conference by giving us all important food for though about our responsibilities as designers.
Text — Paul Woods
