Hey! I’m Ellie and I run On Point Studio, which is basically a one woman band, besides my ‘intern’ doggo, Gruff, who comes everywhere with me. I mostly create beautiful brands for start-ups and small businesses, as well as designing merch and social media content, but I’m always open to weird and unique projects.

The freedom! When you work for yourself, you get to say who you work with and on what, and politely decline the rest. This gives your personal style and skills so much space to grow. You also have the freedom to decide when you work, which means if you’re not in a good headspace to produce good work one day, you can take some time for yourself and make the it up later that week.

Inspiration is a tricky one for me to pinpoint. Sometimes I feel like it’s everywhere and I don’t even have to look for it; song lyrics, magazines, someone you pass in the street, anything can spark an idea. Other times, I don’t feel that way and just scroll and scroll through Pinterest or Instagram waiting for something to click, trying not to get too frustrated! I love that Instagram allows you to follow your favourite artists’ work and curate a feed that motivates you, so I’d probably say that’s where I most consistently get inspiration from.

This merch line’s themes of contrast and duality instantly resonated with me. This last year has been maybe my happiest and most fun, in contrast to the year before which was tough in almost all aspects of life and quite a dark time for my mental health. I’m very much a believer in hard times making better times even more beautiful and accepting that we can’t be happy all of the time, so many of my initial concepts were based on darkness and light working together. I settled on the idea of stars needing darkness to shine, made a few sketches, and cleaned my favourite one up to the finished design on Adobe Illustrator.

Most of the time! There’s nothing like putting a great playlist on and really zoning into a flow activity like design when something’s getting to you. It can be a great way to process something, or put it out of your mind entirely for a few hours. Sometimes though, design is what’s stressing me out. When ideas don’t flow as I’d like or things aren’t really coming together, I can be really hard on myself and need to take a step back, so I guess it’s all about doing what’s best for you at that time.

I try to remind myself that every emotion is temporary and that good times and bad often come in waves. I think it’s important to allow ourselves time to acknowledge and process negative feelings and get back to a positive place in our own time. This can mean reaching out to someone I trust and sharing how I’m feeling, or just spending a day alone making stuff, whatever feels helpful at the time.

Do it! I don’t think it’s everything to have qualifications to break into design – I studied Animation at uni, took a few years to do other things and then taught myself Graphic Design – you can learn just as much online as with a tutor if you’re able to motivate yourself. Just get a body of work together and start putting stuff out there, even if you don’t feel quite ready. You can develop your style and improve as you go. If you’re thinking of going freelance, it’s probably best to build up to it before you leave your steady job, or to have a safety net of savings to cover a few months if things don’t pick up straight away. I just jumped and panicked my way through the first few projects, but I could have saved myself a lot of stress!