Welcome to the thirteenth episode of Sustaining Craft the Podcast, a series that features those in a creative field. Listen below to learn more or keep scrolling to read about Katy Raines and her ability to meld structure and creativity!

Katy Raines knew she wanted to be an artist by her senior year of high school.

She also knew she needed to find a way to build a career.

She’d always had a crayon in her hand as a child, but went through the usual consideration of perhaps becoming an astronaut or a doctor. She took art classes in ninth grade, then Adobe Indesign and Photoshop while she was a senior. “That was the final, ‘Ok, I love these programs. This is really cool,’” Raines shared. ‘And we had to research a job in that class. So I researched a graphic designer at that point, so I knew what they did, I knew how much they made, and I knew how in demand they were. And practical me was like, ‘Well, graphic design makes way more sense than fine art.’”

Ever the researcher, she discovered that becoming a graphic designer meant she could create as a career without foregoing the paycheck. There was also the freedom of creating the art she loved in her spare time. “I figured I could do the graphic design full time and then do fine art on the side and still have fun with it,” Raines said.

In 2015, Raines graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a degree in graphic design and a job. The job started as an internship in 2014, over her senior year of college. A professor had emailed her about the position, suggesting she apply. “I saw it and I was like heck yeah,” Raines said. “It’s an internship, they just want part-time, this would be perfect for my senior year or over the summer, whatever. So I was actually in Hawaii when I found the email on my honeymoon. My husband was still asleep so I got up super early and luckily I had my laptop with me and I finished my portfolio and sent my resume. And I sent it to my current boss now and she emailed me back the same day.”

They scheduled an internship after her return. Jet lagged, Raines thought she’d bombed.

She began the internship at Colliers International soon after while she finished her degree, working 20 hours a week while going to classes. “They didn’t have a marketing department at all about a month before I started,” Raines explained. “And then my boss said, ‘We have to have a designer.’ And so now I’ve gotten to do everything from photography to web to social media to actual graphic design work.”

About a month before she graduated, they offered her a full-time position. Raines wanted the job, but she also wanted the salary she knew the position commanded. She’d already negotiated the internship rate, and she was ready to do the same for her salary. “Doing the research beforehand really made me feel better going in,” Raines explained. “Because when they gave me that contract and I was sitting there in somebody’s office, I had looked at the numbers that morning and had done the research for a couple weeks beforehand. And I remembered researching it in high school. … Going in with that knowledge really prepared me, I think, to be ready. If they undercut me by a ton, I’m going to uppercut them by a ton. Then they’ll have to meet me in the middle because I’ll be like, ‘No, I looked this up, I’ve done the research, the standard is this.’ … My boss at the time was very encouraging, and she thought it was hilarious that I negotiated. They were surprised, but they liked it. … They were like, ‘This intern hasn’t even graduated yet and is negotiating her salary.’ I was like, ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’”

But then the schedule quickly became monotonous. “I was definitely in a creative rut for a year at least,” Raines shared. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

She wasn’t accomplishing anything creative or new outside of work. Raines first decided to join a gym, remembering her athletic days. She also started yoga at home. “It probably took another year to get up after that to really be like, ‘Ok, I feel better, I have more time, I’ve learned how to manage my time. I don’t feel drained from going to work,’” Raines said.

When she was ready to start a creative hobby, she looked first to Instagram, then design podcasts for inspiration. “And then I was looking up lettering podcasts, and there’s only one, and it’s (shoutout) Drunk on Lettering,” Raines shared. “And it’s by two girls and they’re awesome. It was not necessarily a lot about technical, it was getting to know the people behind the lettering. But from that podcast, I was able to find all these other letterers and inspiring people.”

She started hand lettering on January 1, setting a goal of four to five designs a week. “It’s illustrating letters,” Raines explained. “It’s the easiest way of putting it. It’s not just, here’s an ‘A.’ … It’s taking the ‘A’ and building onto it and maybe you make it with extra tails and loops and spirally. And sometimes you’re like, ‘No I want it to be gross and dirty,’ and you make it look like snot or something.”

The new skill combined structure and creativity. “Taking the letters out of the box,” Raines said. “So you have the standard of A through Z, and everybody knows what they look like and expanding on it. It’s my two favorite things. I have the structure of the letters, but then it’s like you build upon that and be as creative as possible. And see what you can force it to do with it still looking like itself.”

Now, she’s incorporating more of her fine art into her lettering. She’d always enjoyed her college illustration classes, and she decided to mix illustration and lettering. With the process over the last nine months, she’s focused on building a consistent habit. “I try not to spend too much time on them, because for now, for me, it’s about getting in the habit and getting to know the letters and figuring how to use them and how to be creative with it,” Raines shared. “It’s not about perfection for me, and you can tell. Sometimes I’ll spend more time on it than others, but if you wait for it to be perfect, you’ll never share it.”

And it’s been a natural fit for her freelance work. She’s gained some side gigs around chalkboards, t-shirt design, paintings, logos, fliers, and prints. She’d like to do more album cover work. But she’s also keeping her options open. “My freelance has been everywhere right now,” Raines said. “I don’t want to nail it down.”

And Raines has brought her unique ability of melding structure with the creative into a new social, creative endeavor she’s facilitating: Art on the Rocks, at Fassler Hall.

She’d attended a drink and draw before at a conference and decided to bring the concept back to Little Rock. The free event provides paper on tables, markers, and a low-pressure way to meet other people and create some doodles while enjoying dinner or a beer. “I wanted people that maybe didn’t have as much as encouragement in the arts as I did,” Raines explained. “To be encouraged and to come anyway. We’re on our fifth one. Now we’ve had med students come and they come because they’re like, ‘We need a break.’”

She’s encouraging others that there’s room for error–a lesson she’s learned herself this year. “This whole year has been like, it doesn’t have to be perfect,” Raines shared. “Since the start of the lettering, it’s been, you know, I can relax a little. I don’t need to line up everything perfectly and measure it out.”

And for those stuck, she recommends finding something creative to do. “If you’re finding yourself in a rut, find that passion project or something on the side to work on,” Raines encouraged. “Because if you’re creating for a job, you still need that other space to get out what you want, not what somebody’s paying you to get out. So find it. There are so many podcasts and so many different things to do. You know it’s gonna suck. It’s going to suck for the first month or two you do it, and that’s what makes it fun.”

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Find Katy’s work on Instagram, or Facebook. Find more information about Art on the Rocks here. And as always, there’s lots more in the episode! Listen below.