Story of failure: Spilling green matcha all over my new white shirt.

Hi, I’m Ian Barnard, a hand lettering artist and calligrapher. I have a passion for inspiring, entertaining and helping people to get better at their lettering skills through videos on my Instagram and Youtube channels and also creating and selling digital lettering brushes for the iPad.

I also am co-host of a popular creative podcast called The Honest Designers Show, where we give you a transparent look into life as a modern designer. You can find us on most podcasting platforms or check out our website honestdesigners.com

I live in a small town just outside London, England with my wife and 2 kids. Attend and help out at my local church and try to balance my love of food by running and riding my mountain bike.

In today's episode Ian talks about:

- originally being a graphic designer
- leaving his job to freelance on the same day his son was born
- decided to teach himself a hobby
- teaching himself calligraphy
- using Instagram to get feedback on his progress
- starting to get work inquiries after he improved
- getting paid for his hobby
- getting paid not based on client income
- starting into the world of stock design assets
- making products to sell on Creative Market
- figuring out effects on certain products
- going all in on selling products online
- progressing to typefaces and Procreate assets
- the journey of setbacks
- self-critiquing your work
- being ok with a product not doing well and moving on
- sense of being down and working through it
- learning through the process to get to the higher mountain
- loving the adrenaline of releasing a product
- seeing further into the hope of the future
- a healthy competition
- producing things that he likes and not what will necessarily just sell
- getting inspiration from Pinterest
- realizing he’s good a problem solving
- lessons from the spinning beach ball
- being ok with the fact that there may not be a solution
- the journey of hits and flops
- hard to stay positive when you’re down in the valley
- his willingness to try
- a teacher being a mentor growing up, Big Zach
- his dad being a head master growing up
- the mentorship of a man from Uganda
- creating a font, releasing it, and making another one
- failures with fonts
- learning shortcuts and learning how to build
- “You think you failed…and then you realize it was worth it in the end.”
- free font that was given away being the most popular
- story of a free font showing up on a store window
- story of his font showing up on Krispy Kreme and getting free donuts
- the skill of typography and learning the process
- teaching lettering in the UK
- teaching his own kids lettering
- his son playing soccer and not forcing him to do anything
- playing in the park during the middle of the pandemic
- his son not wanting to train, just playing for fun
- “I think that’s where you learn the best, when you’re having fun.”
- “The best ideas have come when I’m just having fun.”
- making lettering out of rubix cubes
- realizing your creativity through playing
- doing courses online and making his own leather wallet
- being intimidated by a custom typeface for a client
- not being great with client relations
- “I just want to create and deliver the goods.”
- the back and forth battle of an artist
- client liaisons and the trickiness of not having them
- the pandemic breaking his consistency
- more natural being on video and hearing his voice
- the steps to good YouTube videos
- the laborious process of videos
- releasing a video every week and a product every three weeks
- the anxiety of the pandemic
- familiar things feeding his creativity and the lack thereof during the last couple of years
- some people not being affected
- should have started the cat typography videos sooner!