Sometimes in life you come across a person that you immediately are rooting for. Their passion for their work, their ambition, and their kindness combine to make for an unstoppable force that causes everyone around them to hope for and believe in their success. And sometimes, that person is a twin, so all the hoping and belief is doubled!
I got to know Jen & Amy Hood — founders of Hoodzpah Design — over a decade ago and I have been consistently impressed with not only their creative output, but even more by their ability to build others up.
On top of creating incredible work for a jaw-dropping list of clients (ahem... like have you seen the new title treatment for the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch? That was them) they are constantly working to equip and empower other creatives through online courses, their custom built fonts, and genuinely positive hype comments on social media.
We recently worked together on creating a custom hat for their online store that embodies their creative spirit, and that of their community, plus of dash of their signature cheekiness.
Read more about this collaborative project & one of your new favorite design studios through our interview with Amy Hood.
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Imagine you're describing what Hoodzpah does to my 9 year old son. How would you explain it?
You know your favorite cereal or your favorite movie or your favorite game? Someone drew and designed all those cool things! They picked the style of letters, the colors, made fun illustrations, took cool photos and put it all together to make that! That's what we do. That's graphic design. When you're redrawing the Minecraft or Stussy logo on your notebook, you're retracing your favorite logos. Logos are my favorite part of graphic design!
You literally wrote the book on freelancing in the creative economy. (Check out "Freelance, and Business, and Stuff") What are some things you learned about freelancing and freelancers as you wrote, and subsequently taught courses based on this book?
Freelancers are DIY-ers! If you're the kind of person who likes to pick up new hobbies, learn new skills, build your own things, undertake your own DIY projects, are an epic google-er and problem solver, then you would make an amazing freelancer. The freelancers I know that really thrive relish trying new things and the puzzle of figuring out a new project or skill. They also have a great community. Community is everything when you freelance. Having a community that becomes your client base, and also having a community of fellow creatives to ask questions when you get stuck. The relationships aspect is what keeps you employed. There's so many talented folks out there, but a lot of having a steady freelance career is promoting yourself, and then treating the clients you get like kings. Great customer service and being a helpful collaborator will turn clients into lifetime collaborators. The easiest way to find new work is to nourish the partnerships you already have. They will come back and they will refer their friends!
How hard is it to make your own fonts? We have purchased and use many of the ones you've made btw.
And we love to see it! There is no greater joy than seeing our fonts in use in the wild. The dopamine hit is next to none. Making the initial A-Z, 0-9 is easy. It's building out all the other punctuation and weights and italics and marketing it and getting it up on your shop and actually FINISHING the font that is the real struggle! It's a marathon not a sprint for sure. I just happen to find the tedium relaxing and enjoyable!
When receiving feedback on your work, how do you separate yourself from the criticism you receive from clients?
We are big on strategy leading creative! So at the beginning of every project we meet with our client and agree to the core goal of the project, and core brand traits the project needs to exude. That way when we get to the feedback stage we can all look at the creative more objectively: does it meet our goal? Does it fit in the brand traits? Every proof we send to a client has those goals and brand traits restated before we present the creative to get everyone in the right headspace to make great work that meets the goal. This approach really helps align everyone on feedback and weeds out the subjective feedback from the objective feedback. It's distinguishing between personal taste and what's right for the project.
Ok, now tell us about these hats you just made. And why you did it!
Kohl, we've known you for over a decade now?! We've loved doing pop-ups with Known Supply over the years. And it was long overdue that Hoodzpah released some wearable merch. You hit me up and we schemed up this hat to do together. We wanted to release something for our fellow creative service workers who are out there in the trenches trying to get great creative work approved. So we made the "Creative Staff" hat. We used the Known Supply Camp hat and it is SO unbelievably soft and breathable.
What are you doing to inspire creativity outside of the work that "pays the bills"?
We just love brand design and analyzing when it works and when it doesn't. We're always thinking about projects we wish were a thing, so we do a lot of "for fun" personal work around things we're excited about, which is almost always something to do with the Lakers or movies and tv. We're huge Lakers fans so when we're watching games we're often illustrating little animated gifs, or practicing new illustration styles. We love doing recaps of our favorite media when we have time. It's so important to just play and try new styles and make the kind of work you want to get paid to do.
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