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Daniel Fishel: Is there something in the water up in Canada that makes so many incredible illustrators or is it because there are only three or four big art schools in Canada compared to the dozen or more in America? Sabrina Smelko: Hmm, maybe because there are fewer art schools in Canada that can only take around 100 students per year, they're much harder to get into making for a smaller pool of talented graduates so we all look pretty good standing next to each other. Where as America has dozens more art school, so maybe more mediocre students get in, thus, diluting the pool. But I’m not sure to be honest. Maybe us Canadian feel we have something to prove not being from New York. It’s a mysterious topic that will forever plague us. That said, while there’s plenty of opportunities in Canada, it seems - from the outside - that there's far more in the U.S. Perhaps because of this, maybe talented Canadian illustrators compensate by saturating social media as we’re not psychically there to walk into the offices of large publications. Or maybe it is just the fresh Canadian water and air! Either way, I love and am proud to be Canadian, and if that comes with a good reputation, I’ll take it. After I met you over twitter and checked out your work a year or two ago, I was shaking in my boots by how incredibly fine tuned your illustration work is. It's very clean and technically sound. When I saw you pursued the agency life I was left scratching my head a bit. What made you decide to take on a roll as an Art Director? Thank you, I really appreciate that compliment - I wish I thought that of myself at the time. But upon graduating in April 2012, I wasn’t convinced that I was cut out to be a freelance illustrator — in the traditional sense at least. Throughout school it seemed that editorial illustration was one of the only options for an illustrator, and back then, I wasn’t comfortable with my editorial book. What I did know was that I loved and knew I was good at coming up with big ideas and that I had a hunger to explore design as well. I applied to work as a creative at an ad agency thinking that I could flex my creative muscles more broadly and explore big ideas (bigger than I could ever accomplish on my own). I also thought I could freelance and fine-tune my illustration work on my down-time. I was hired right out of school and, needless to say, agencies don’t necessarily run the way I imagined. I thought I could be multi-disciplinary and work fluidly and abstractly having a part in conception, copywriting, art direction and execution -- but that’s not necessarily how the business is structured. I found it hard to accept that my job required me to only come up with ideas and leave final execution to another designer, illustrator or animator, so for a time I took on many of the tasks that should have otherwise been outsourced. It was gracious of my Creative Director to allow me to do it, but obviously executing this work on-top of my daily responsibilities burned me out. Not to mention, I was voluntarily doing the extra work without being compensated. It didn’t make any logical sense for me personally. I learnt a ton and got to execute some great work for huge brands, but I ended up having to turn down many illustration jobs throughout the year. It slowly became obvious that I couldn’t do both jobs — at least not well. I had to choose; did I want to be the idea girl or the execution girl? I couldn’t be both at the agency on a large scale, but I could be both if I was self-employed on a smaller scale, so I made the choice to quit my job and pursue freelance illustration and design. By then, I had 8 months of experience sharpening my teeth in dealing with clients, coming up with ideas and bettering my skills as a creative. That said, while it’s not for me, my experience there was priceless and I wouldn’t change much.
Would you ever go back to working the agency life or would you want to start your own boutique agency? Are you fine just being a freelancer?
I would not go back to advertising. It’s personally not for me — at least how ad agencies run currently, but I have a feeling that’s going to change very soon. I’d consider working at a boutique design house or starting my own someday, but for now, I’ve had quite a lot of success as a freelancer. I also work very quickly, and I've found that in all of the full-time jobs I’ve experienced in in my entire life, I get punished for this; I either have to pretend to be busy and bore myself to death or I make others look slow, or worse - I get tasked with more work than the person beside me; more work for the same salary. Not necessarily my cup of tea. Also, my boyfriend is the founder of a multi-disciplinary creative company, Wild and Light, so we collaborate from time to time, but for now, I feel extremely lucky to be able to work freelance full-time. I thought I’d struggle for even a year or two, but come last spring -- a few months after quitting my job and exactly a year after graduating -- I was met with more success than I had anticipated. I’m grateful and believe that my experiences so far have led me here; nothing has been a waste of time and I’ve learnt invaluable lessons from my agency experience that can’t be discounted.
Once you left doing the agency life it seemed like you were able to hit the ground running. Did working in an agency better prepare you for working as a freelancer or were you already well oiled and prepared post art school?
Specifically as a creative in advertising, most of the work happens in your head. Your job requires you to come up with ideas to solve client briefs, and this aspect of your job exists in your head before you ever put it into words or draw it out - much like illustration. I was green going in but by the time I left the agency, I had a far better understanding of what good ideas are and aren’t. But more importantly, I learnt how to defend my ideas. You have to believe in your work for others to believe in it too and you need to be able to tell somebody exactly why your solution is the best solution. When you’re working amongst a team of other talented and experienced creatives all bidding for the same brief, you develop a healthy sense of competition. It’s not enough to have a good idea, you need to know why it’s a good idea and stand unwaveringly behind it.
However, these things aren’t necessarily obvious or tangible to someone hiring me who’s never worked with me before, so I can’t attribute my success after quitting entirely to my agency experience. I simply work hard and constantly put myself out there, even when it’s terrifying. I believe in what I do and try to put myself in positions that scare me; it’s the best way to grow, gain confidence and get noticed and it typically leads to great work. So while I left the agency more confident and completely unafraid to put myself out there, I think luck and good timing paired with hard work and eagerness (not desperation) led to my success out of the gate.
You work in two illustration styles. The one that I know you for which is figurative and one that is more vector, icon based and (for lack of a better word) designy. Does this confuse art directors or help them? Does this make you more in demand because you can do more than one thing?
To be honest, I’m not sure and I’d love to know myself. For the clients I want to work with, I’d like to think they'd get it and wouldn't be confused or deterred, but it might confuse more small-scale publication ADs, perhaps. But I think the industry is changing and evolving all the time and we have to give more credit to Art Directors. I know many personally and while it might be really new school of me to say, it's not so black-and-white anymore. Different articles and different projects require different looking images; some are serious and some are fun, and I personally like to paint them with a different brush, so to speak. As far as being more in demand, yes — but separately. I don’t think I’m more in demand as an illustrator because I’m also a designer, but I’m more in demand in general. I hope that makes sense. What I mean is, one of the main reasons I think I’m able to work full-time as a freelancer is because when illustration jobs are slow, I have design jobs waiting, or lettering or animation or website design jobs in my inbox. The pool of work I fish from is simply larger; I have eggs in a few baskets rather than banking on just one. That said, I can say for sure that my design work informs my illustration work and vice-versa, so being skilled in various disciplines definitely strengthens the others. However, it does give me anxiety sometimes that my work is hard to define in a single word. I do fear that it is perhaps confusing to people and I wonder if I should separate my work somehow even more than I already have on my website. But I don’t really have a solution or know what the best way of working is -- but I’m not convinced that there is a right and wrong way. It seems to be working for me, so I have to trust in that and just continue to do work I’m proud of and work that pleases my clients. While it's fun to speculate and converse about what's right or wrong, I believe it's an ever-changing field and it's naïve to deny that.
In art school I was asked to write out a 5 and 10 year plan. Did you ever have to do this and do you have a long view plan 5, 10, 20 years?
No, but if I had, I would have thrown it out the window long ago. Freelance creative work is hard if not impossible to plan for. You have to be able to roll with things and balance many jobs at once; you have to be very flexible and able to think on the go. Also, I can’t speak for everyone, but personally, the perception I had on the working world before graduation is entirely different from what it’s turned out to be. Sure, we had ample education in business and knew what contracts were, how the flow between client and creative works and the like, but you can’t possibly learn in school how it feels and what it’s really like to work and multi-task on 4 paying professional projects for more than one client at once. Sure, you balance many school projects at once, but it’s so not the same in the professional landscape. You simply have to experience it in order to learn how to prioritize and manage expectations. Having been in the field for a while, if I had to make a goal or plan, it would be to be successful enough that I can eat well, travel here and there and not have to worry about monthly bills while doing work I love to do. That’s winning.
Which is more true, "a career in illustration" or "a practice as an illustrator”?
This topic is a timeless one. Are you an artist or a businessperson first? I know everyone has their own opinion and that’s okay; like I said before, I’m not sure there’s a right answer or way, there’s only a right answer and way for you. But personally, I think 'a career in illustration’ is more true. At the end of the day, as much as I enjoy the craft and art of my job, it’s just that — a job. I’m lucky that I enjoy it and that it doubles as art and I believe that I’d still draw if I was stranded on an island and no one ever saw my work, but at the end of the day, every illustrator is expecting to get paid for the work they just handed in. I doubt if we didn’t get paid for our work we’d be cool with it and keep going. I think it’s unrealistic and irresponsible to think we would. We’re not sustaining ourselves solely on personal work; we’re getting paid to complete a task set out by a client. So for now — for me -- I have a career in illustration.
Will you ever leave Toronto?
I actually moved back to my hometown of Milton — just outside of Toronto — when I quit my agency job, and I don’t plan on moving back anytime soon. I’m quite a homebody and enjoy the peace of a smaller town, so I’m quite content with where I am now. Sure, it might help to live and work in a large city such as Toronto or New York, but I don’t believe it’s a make or break thing. My work happens online 90% of the time and Toronto is 40 minutes away if I ever have to meet a client, work on location or attend an industry event. Not to mention, I simply love Milton. It’s a beautiful balance of nature (on the Niagara escarpment) and city and my entire family is here, which for me, is very important.
Illustrators always make themselves sounds really really busy. Do you have a life outside of freelance work or is it a mirage we all chase at the end of the week?
Not really. I work all the time, but it’s mostly by choice. And when I’m not busy with client work, I take on a lot of personal projects. I actually just bought my first home and so renovating and painting is taking up a lot of my down-time and also satisfying a kind of visceral desire as a creative, so lately I’ve been busy with that “project” you could say. I also believe keeping busy is inherent to creatives; most successful creatives I know have a personality where they want to work all the time - whether what they’re doing is labelled as work or not. And additionally, we have anxiety, naturally. In a career of unknowns and one that is unpredictable, I think a lot of us experience anxiety when we wake up and don’t have a job waiting in our inbox, but things always work out. When the week ahead looks scarce, by Tuesday you could be so busy your eyes are falling out, but that’s the nature of the business which makes it difficult to fully relax and enjoy downtime without thinking about what’s coming down the pipeline. So I don't blame us crazy kids.
Any advice for any younger illustrators out there?
Don’t be afraid, don’t be timid, don’t be arrogant and don’t ever be too content but do work hard and do be a nice person. Last Words? You learn a lot about humans by reading Kijiji and Craigslist posts. I’ve been hunting online for deals on furniture for my new place and it’s fascinating sifting through postings. The last gem I found was a post for ‘Free Chapstick - used once, pickup only’. Just sayin’