Overtime is Dribbble’s audio companion where we talk to Dribbble members about their background, process, and shots.

Laura Bohill

Designer and Illustrator of happy things!

In this interview, Dan speaks with freelance illustrator, icon artist, branding specialist, letterer, and all around cool person, Laura Bohill.

Laura and Dan chat about freelancing, accents, Ghostly Ferns, working with folks you love, why you don’t have to be good at everything to be successful, and much more.

Dan also asks Laura about a few of her Dribbble shots and process. She shares the story behind “Choose Progress Over Perfection” and “Design Makes Everything Possible,” pictured above. She also gives the inside scoop about the Ghostly Fern mascot, Flo—pictured above with a little zombie flair for Halloween.

Subscribe on iTunes or Download the episode via Simplecast

Links Mentioned in Overtime

Laura’s Website

Laura on Twitter

Laura on Dribbble

Ghostly Ferns

Workshop

Studiomates

Cotton Bureau

InVision

Design Makes Things Possible T-shirt from Marketplace by InVision

Erin Nolan

Transcript

Dan Cederholm: Hey, this is Overtime, Dribbble’s audio companion, and today we’re talking with Laura Bohill, a freelance illustrator, icon artist, branding specialist, letterer, and all around cool person. I’ve been a big fan ofLaura for a long time. She’s been a long-time Dribbble member, and her work’s fantastic and very fun. We’re really thrilled to talk to her today. So without further ado. Welcome, Laura B. It’s so awesome to have you on Overtime. Thanks for joining us.

Laura Bohill: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Dan: It’s super good, and I’ve been a big fan of yours for a long time, because you’ve been on Dribbble for a long time. Probably before that, too

I’ve just been following your work and been a big fan of watching you grow as a designer. So it’s really good to talk to you in person about that, and to get some more info on you, and how you started, what you do, your process and whatever else we can talk about. First of all, I’ll start with the obvious question. Where are you from, and what’s your background, and how did you get into design?

Laura: I’m from County Durham, which is in the northeast of England. I basically lived in the middle of nowhere for most of my life, surrounded by fields, and hills, and trees. Basically only child, on my own, so I just had all of this beautiful countryside around me. Right in front of my house there was a field full of cows, and for some reason growing up, I convinced myself that I owned these cows, and the farmer just looked after them for me. They were my imaginary pets when I was growing up.

Dan: That’s awesome.

Laura: I have no idea how I convinced myself of this but I did. I always wanted a dog. Never had a dog. Still really do want one. But I did actually have a pet goat, a couple of rabbits, several goldfish, and four pet ducks. I had the most bizarre pets growing up. That’s what it is living in British countryside, I guess.

Yeah, I always, in terms of design and illustration, I always have drawn. I think a lot of us creative people always have. I was never happier than when I got a new set of pens and a new wedge of paper. That was like the best day ever.

Dan: Yeah.

Laura: When I was a kid, there’s one particular story that I love; we had this really gross, kind of like a grayish-blue wallpaper that had these flowers on it. It wasn’t until this one day when my mom finally decided to get rid of this really terrible wallpaper that she noticed that there was all of these additional flowers drawn on the wallpaper.

As a kid I’d just been like I’ll just draw on the walls. Why not? I covered this wallpaper in extra flowers, but she never noticed because I clearly did it very well. She was like “Well, why have you done this?” And I was like “Well, it just needs extra flowers,” as if it was no biggie. It was obvious it just needed extra flowers.

I’ve always been creatively inclined as a child growing up. I never really knew how to

I didn’t know this was something you could do as a job. My parents both have admin jobs. They work in offices. My granddad was a builder and my grandma was a seamstress in a factory, so I didn’t really have anyone creative around me as a child. And I was an only child as well.

When I was growing up and people would ask you that question what do you want to be when you were older, I would always say I want to be an artist, but I don’t know how that makes money. That’s actually what I said as a kid. For me, the only way to do what I really wanted to do was to paint and make paintings of sunflowers and sell them by the river or something. I had no idea that graphic design or illustration was really a thing that people could do.

Dan: I totally had the same sort of thought when I was a kid. I didn’t know how design happened and how to make a living doing it.

Laura: It’s just something you take for granted. It’s like everywhere but it’s there.

Dan: I love the animal friends thing which I’ll come back to. I kind of see when we start talking about your style and your illustration style it’s making sense to me now. You’re from County Durham, you said, which is north England?

Laura: Yes, that’s the northeast of England, right on the east coast and it’s probably about an hour’s drive from the Scottish border. It’s really far north.

Dan: Really far north.

Laura: I confuse a lot of Americans with what my accent actually is. A lot of people think I’m Australian.

Dan: I hear Scottish a bit in there, but I guess it’s because of the proximity.

Laura: Yeah.

Dan: That’s cool. I love all the accents. Such a small area of the world has such distinct accents of the same language. I guess you could say the same for the US but I don’t know. Is it true, as a non-US person, do you notice the accents more than you would in the UK?

Laura: A little bit but not so much. Everyone really just sounds American to me.

However, Jessi Arrington is in the studio I work from, and she has a very southern accent. Hers sounds completely different to everyone else. That’s the only one who sounds distinctly different. A couple of people I pick up certain words that sound different but everyone else generally sounds the same to me.

Dan: That makes sense. I guess southern accents definitely are distinct.

Laura: Very different. My accent’s having an identity crisis right now. I’ve been in the States for three years, and I come home, and everyone says, “Laura, you sound so American.” I’m like what? But the American people think I sound British so I must be some kind of weird hybrid. I have no idea what’s coming out of my mouth. I have no idea what I’m doing.

Dan: I think you’re doing great. That said, you’ve been in the US for three years. You were doing freelance design before that, in the UK. And you’re still doing it now.

Laura: Yes.

Dan: It would be cool to hear does it matter where you are when you’re doing freelance stuff, or did your work change from when you were in the UK versus New York?

Laura: I think personally it doesn’t really matter for me where I am. I think maybe this is the case for a lot of illustrators too. You don’t necessarily need to work onsite with your client, or meet them in person. I would say a lot of my clients I don’t even have calls with. I do everything via email. So I don’t think you need to be in a city like New York. I do think that it’s definitely helped me and opened up doors that wouldn’t have opened if I’d stayed in Durham.

Even when I was in Durham, I still had clients in San Francisco, and Australia, and Canada. I think just being very active in the online community helps get clients from all over the world. It’s really awesome. My clients in San Francisco I actually got through Dribbble, thank you. They’re awesome. Just someone emails you and is like hey, what’s up. Let’s work together, and you’re like okay.

Being in New York definitely has opened up some doors. I’ve met some amazing people there, and very active online and in the real world. I like to go to conferences and as many events as possible. I just want to make friends. Our industry has so many amazing people. I just want to be friends with them all. I like to make those friends and keep them and work with them. Working with friends is the best time.

Dan: Totally. Along those lines, tell us about Ghostly Ferns. I love how you refer to yourself as a “creative family” instead of a company. It would be cool to hear the origins of how you got involved with them and who they are.

Laura: Ghostly Ferns is definitely the single greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, seriously. We’re a family of freelancers who all work out of the same studio space. The space we work out of is called “The Townhouse” in Brooklyn, New York. It’s run by a company called Workshop. The people behind Workshop are Creighton Mershon, Jessi Arrington, and Casson Rosenblatt. They are incredible people. Not only for me, but I’m sure for everyone else who’s come into their studio space. If you work there full time or just pop in for the day, they make Brooklyn so welcome for everyone. They make sure everyone is included, part of this family. They are so nice.

Within this studio space, we have maybe 25 or 30 of us. We’re all designers, illustrators, developers, writers, all creative people, incredibly talented, and everyone is just almost like a big family. Ghostly Ferns, we work out of the attic. We have our own little space. We like to call it the “haunted attic,” because we’re ghosts. We also like to kill plants. Apparently we can’t keep them alive.

Ghostly Ferns, there’s five of us in total. It was started by Meg [Lewis] who is the single greatest person in the world. Work wise she specializes in Web design and branding. Not limited to that, of course

she can do all kinds of things. I’m sure you could let her loose on anything and she’d just own it for you. She is the most friend