IWD2019: Noelia Lozano on the Highs of Discovering Your Own Style & Voice
WORKING NOT WORKING
We’re supporting Balance for Better as part of International Women’s Day and celebrating spectacular female creatives on Working Not Working who need to be on your radar in 2019. We’re delighted to highlight 9 members who lead the creative conversation through both their careers and personal projects. This interview series covers the pursuit of professional creativity and the breakthroughs, accomplishments, ambitions, dreams, and lessons that follow.
Noelia Lozano is a creative image maker from Spain. Her work is focused on papercrafts, CGI, and set design, often combining different techniques and materials to create boldly visual and colorful tactile imagery. Some of her clients include Havaianas, Kiehl’s, Vodafone, Tumblr, Mini, Fast Company, and Psyop. Below, Noelia discusses the moment she stopped wasting time on things she wasn’t passionate about, why nothing tops the highs of discovering your own creative voice and achieving creative freedom, and how creative women will reach a higher individual potential through a stronger women-led support system.
What was the catalyst for pursuing a creative career? What kept you going to get to where you are now?
I was working as a project draftsman designer for a telecommunications studio. I liked the work I was doing at that moment but I was not passionate about it. In my spare time, I was always developing other types of work and much more interested in the creative field than in telecommunications.
After thinking about it a lot and not feeling good about wasting time on something that I was not in love with, I left everything behind to start from scratch and bet on my true passion: graphic design. I started to study graphic design and followed my dream of becoming a designer.
The desire to develop my own ideas and work have led me to follow my own path and make the kind of work and style I´m happy with. Continuing to dream and be passionate about what I do has probably been the biggest drive for me. This creative world has taught me that anything is possible.
What's your proudest creative breakthrough, project, or accomplishment and why?
When I started studying graphic design, I never thought I could develop my own style and voice and be able to develop it as a professional. That's what I feel most proud of, to work and develop projects from my own studio, having creative freedom and independence from working inside a studio or a big agency. The clients I team up with for creative projects normally come to me already knowing the kind of work I do and the style I have developed.
I´m really happy and proud of have made a way of life from my own work and being able to wake up every morning knowing that I will dedicate the day working on something I´m passionate about. That is my biggest achievement and personal satisfaction, as well as having worked with people and brands that I would never have dreamed of having the opportunity to work with.
What's the one piece of advice you'd share with fellow creative women?
Work hard and dream harder! Never let anyone tell you what to do or underestimate you as a person or your work. Believe in yourself above everything. That is the way to achieve your dreams and advance. As a community, we also need to work harder together and support each other to take bigger steps.
Pay it forward. Name a badass creative and tell us why they inspire you right now.
I have always admired Jessica Walsh for the kind of work she develops and her brilliant creative direction. But nowadays, I’m more inspired by a personal project she started: ladieswineandesign, which helps the female creative community get more visibility and support each other with different kinds of events around the world in different cities. I had the chance to be a part at different venues of the project, in New York under the leadership of Jessica and one organized here in Spain, in the Basque country in Bilbao, under the great team of Susana Blasco and Nerea Gómez. They make incredible work and it has been always been a blast to take part and be able to share different experiences and meet other creatives. Right now is the moment to make things happen. We have empowered ourselves and it is the right time to take advantage of all that energy and turn it into something incredible.
What would be your dream project or job?
I would love to work with lots of brands and clients that I’ve always dreamed about; of course, that would make me happy. But during this year, I have different personal goals in the studio: one is to explore new types and different registers in my own work and try to work for new kinds of clients in styles I haven’t worked with in the past, like fashion. Nowadays, I´m very interested in exploring movement and building new things from that, and also making bigger sets. I had the chance in the past to develop a few of these kinds of projects and really enjoy seeing my work in a bigger context and scale. It makes it feel more real yet more playful at the same time.
