In a new Dribbble interview, San Francisco-based illustrator Hannah Swann shares how she manifests inspiration and her mission to champion using illustration as a tool for communication in the design industry.
What does design mean to you?
My name is Hannah Swann. I’m a designer and illustrator living in the Bay Area. Design to me, simply is just visual problem-solving. If I’m ever turning on a project, I always just ask myself “what problem I might try to solve?” and it usually gets me back on track. Being a designer is really about having kind of a makers mentality. I really like to bring my curiosity and that idea of possibility into other areas of my life.
Where do you find your inspiration?
I really strongly believe in manifesting inspiration instead of finding it—I do that by curating the content I see as well as the spaces around me. So I surround myself with work from artists that I really admire and I make sure my workspace is all clean and ready to go and ready to draw at any moment.
What impact has Dribbble had on you?
Dribbble has really impacted my career in a big way. Especially when I was trying to break into the tech industry. I moved to the Bay from Virginia, where we had just discovered Responsive Design years behind everybody else. I moved out here and did some deep Dribbble lurking. I would even read the hashtags on shots just to kind of understand what people were calling their work and how they were thinking about it. It really removed an access barrier for me as I was able to go into interviews and feel really competent and be speaking the same language as my interviewers.
What is your typical day like?
Intentionality is really important to me. I try to start all of my days with some time to journal and set my tasks for the day and time block. Because after that and the busyness really starts, it’s really hard to keep on task. It’s a crap-shoot of balancing like getting work done and meetings. But I always try to make time to break for lunch and spend some time hanging out and eating with my co-workers.
How would you describe your work?
Illustration I think is a really overlooked tool for communication in the design industry. So, I’ve have had a really wonderful opportunity to focus on it and really prove that it is such a strong viable tool for business strategy and content strategy and it’s work I would like to continue doing.
Follow Hannah on Dribbble, on Twitter, and at www.hannahswann.com.
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