Today we’d like to introduce you to Beth Harper.
Hi Beth, I am so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, how can you bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Sure! I’ve always been interested in art, and since I was a little kid, I have written and illustrated little stories about cats. When I was in middle school, my interest started getting more serious, and I started taking art classes after school at a local art studio, which led to my interest in graphic design. In college, I had a dual major in Studio Art and Communications with an emphasis on graphic design and later went on to get a master’s in Publication Design.
Like most artists, my story is not super linear. After college I embarked on a music career, a passion I had also pursued since my youth, and toured as a keyboardist in a punk rock band. Almost a decade later, I decided to get serious about design again and went back to school.
It didn’t take me long to realize I wanted to work independently. My first design job out of grad school was at a local mortgage company and was a poor fit for me culturally. I immediately decided I wanted to be a freelancer, secured a couple of clients, and left my 9-to-5 as soon as possible. However, I quickly realized how green I was and needed more professional experience.
I built a web and email design and development career with some UX tied in. After starting a family, I knew I wanted to pursue freelancing full-time again to allow me to spend more time with them. Today, I’m proud to say I’m entirely freelancing—focusing on illustration, print, and digital design for small businesses and non-profits.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been a challenging road. When I started freelancing practically straight out of grad school, I was very green and did not have much professional experience. Besides the few clients I started with, I found it very hard to get new clients to trust me; I was supplementing my income with restaurant jobs, so my schedule could have been better, and to be honest, I got in my way a lot. I wasn’t taking my business seriously, and I needed help setting goals for myself and achieving them. A mentor recently said, “Procrastination can disguise itself as productivity,” I did a lot of that—creating projects for myself that were lofty, time-consuming, and not profitable. I had a tough time once I decided I needed to return to the job market. We were in a recession, and I now had a resume gap, and I still didn’t have much professional experience. I ultimately took a paid internship at a web design company for vacation rentals, which became a great fit and led me to pursue a career in web design and development, which then morphed into email design and development. I learned that any job is what you make of it, and the people you work with can either make or break your job satisfaction. Now that I’m full-time freelancing again, I have that first experience to look back on and am on a much better path with much more confidence and knowledge to fall back on.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My design expertise spans across a wide range of domains, including branding, print and digital design, web design, and illustration. I have a knack for simplifying complex ideas and presenting them visually to the target audience. Whether it’s creating a logo, developing a company’s brand, designing a brochure, presentation slides, a website, or an illustration, I believe that the essence of good design lies in understanding the message and the audience and effectively solving the problem at hand.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
So many! I love reading, and I love a good podcast. I’m listening to Andy J. Pizza’s “Right Side Out” series, which is part of his “Creative Pep Talk” series, and it’s been incredibly thought-provoking. All of Lisa Congdon’s books have been amazingly inspiring. When designing a logo, I flip through Aaron Draplin’s “Pretty Much Everything” book to get the emblem gears going. Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” was huge for me in getting back into illustration. I recommend Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” to anyone and everyone. “It’s Nice That” is a design blog from the U.K. that I frequently frequent. And “Gimme Some Oven” and “Smitten Kitchen” help keep my family fed. I also cannot understate the profound effect that acupuncture has had in keeping me at my best, and I highly recommend it for mental and physical health. I always look forward to my monthly visit to Mend, an acupuncture practice in Baltimore.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bethharperdesign.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethharperdesign
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BethHarperDesign/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-harper-design/
- Other: https://cara.app/bethharperdesign
Image Credits
Headshot: Karen Rainier Photography
