How does a finance major become in love with typography and graphic design? Find out from the Lead Product Designer of Adobe Fresco.
Read California College of the Arts graduate, Brooke Hopper’s journey into graphic design and advice on finding your niche in your own art form.
Recently, Matthew Chen (Editor-In-Chief) and Samantha Williams (Editor) sat down in a zoom meeting with Brooke Harper and discussed her professional life while working at Adobe.
Q: What form of art do you specialize in?
Hopper: I have a day job which you could say is design focused.
I am the lead designer for drawing and painting at Adobe and what that means is that I oversee all of the drawing and painting features that go into the Creative Cloud apps.
For the past few years, I’ve been focused on Adobe Fresco which launched in September of 2019 and its a drawing and painting app, which right now is on the iPad and a few different windows machines, but we’re looking to expand the platforms. So that’s what I do during the day and I also call myself a recovering graphic designers since I used to work with agencies for many years and I have a soft spot for graphic design.
My masters and my undergraduate thesis actually was on typography and so I also have a soft spot for typography. Graphic design, product design, and typography are sort of the three things I enjoy doing.
Q: When did you start becoming interested in this art form?
Hopper: So I went to undergrad for graphic design, I actually started out as a finance major, and I realized that while I could go on and have a career in finance, I was not going to be super happy and I would not have a fulfilled life.
I had always done a lot of art growing up and I was very lucky since my parents really encouraged it and so I moved over into graphic design two years into undergrad without even knowing what graphic design was.
I grew up in a really small sort of isolated, rural area in Kansas and so my knowledge of the different types of art and design was actually super limited.
I’ve been doing graphic design, that’s where I got my undergraduate in, my graduate degree is in transdisciplinary design and I actually got it at CCA (California College of the Arts) which is here locally in San Francisco. So my master’s degree is in design and it’s a combination of graphic design, experienced design, and product design. And then after my graduate degree, I went to get a job at Adobe and I’ve been there for about 5 years and it’s an awesome place to work.
Q: And so what made you want to pursue design?
Hopper: I was looking for a different undergrad degree, other than finance, something that would make me happy and I wanted to do something related to art but at the time, I was also being very practical and I wanted to go into art that made money. At the time that was graphic design.
I had a friend that was like, there’s this degree that that focuses on computers and focuses on art and it’s called graphic design and maybe you should just check that out.
And so without even checking that out, I just changed my major to graphic design and I’ve never looked back since.
And so it was not an informed choice by any means but, as I had mentioned, I was really lucky that I participated in art growing up and took a lot of summer art classes. Since I was from a really rural area there was no sort of extra circular art activities or anything like that, it was pretty basic but my parents and my family alway encouraged artistic capabilities so I played musical instruments and a lot of other art forms while growing up so it felt really natural for me.
Q: What would you say is one of your favorite and least favorite things about being a graphic designer?
Hopper: So having been a graphic designer and a product designer, which sort of as the years go by grow apart; like when I first started there was really no difference between graphic design and product design but there’s been a split over probably the past 7/8 years.
I would say one of my favorite things in product design, is you have this ability to use creativity to solve problems and to make things people will actually use.
So while I love doing fine art, and as I mentioned my graduate thesis was on temporal typography, which is this area of typography that is sort of exploring the in-between states of kinetic and static typography and two dimensional and three dimensional and so it’s this sort of weird nebulas in-between space, while that was super fun, it’s sort of radical and there’s very little practical application.
And so one of the parts I enjoy, about graphic design and product design is that you can create something that is either going to help someone or inform someone or people are going to use it to also be creative, so I think that’s really nice.
I would say the thing I don’t like about graphic design has less to do about graphic design and more to do with the perception of the value of art in that you always get people coming up to you like, hey can you draw me a logo? They think it’s not going to take much time and that it’s free which is a struggle to sort of communicate the value of your services and what you’re doing. And also it’s one of those things where if someone asks my mom what I do, it’s hard to communicate what you do. I would say that’s one of the things that’s less exciting. There’s very little I don’t like about art and design to be quite honest.
Q: Do you have a story while working in the field of graphic design that you want to share?
Hopper: Yeah I do! it’s sort of a piece of advice combined with a story and so my piece of advice is to never be afraid about reaching out to people who are famous or people who you look up to because people are people. And there may be people, and this applies to all fields, who aren’t the nicest to talk to but for the most part I found that people in the art and design community are super friendly and they always want to chat with you.
So I’ve had multiple experiences where I’ve met, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Carl Martins, I met him in person and did an artist residency in the Netherlands. It was a 6 week residency after I graduated from my master’s degree and so I got to meet him in person and I couldn’t even talk I was so excited.
When I was trying to get an internship directly out of undergrad, I emailed Michael Bierut who is a partner at Pentagram, a really well known design firm, and I put a lot of effort into this email and spend a lot of time trying to find his email address because it’s not listed anywhere. Once I found it, I sent him an email asking him for an internship and he was super kind and he ended up passing my resume along since I didn’t end up getting the internship.
But then later, after I started working for Adobe, I started hosting a show called The Make It Show and I was basically me and one of our world wide evangelists who works at Adobe where we would just sit down and think who we would want to interview. And because it’s Adobe, they’re like yeah sure, we’ll contact these super famous people and you can interview them and so I actually had the opportunity to interview Michael Bierut on The Make It Show.
But it’s been super fun to put away any sort of concerns about what this person is going to think or worries about reaching out to people and just reaching out to people I really admire to talk to and more often than not, they’re just super grateful people who are great to talk to.
And hearing their experience has been so fun, especially since meeting so many illustrators, designers, and artists who I really look up to.
Q: What would you say is a major setback that happened during your artistic career? And what did you learn from that?
Hopper: So when I was in undergrad, I accepted an internship to do web design, and they knew this when they hired me, and I had never done web design before. I mean this was in like 2006 and so I had never done web design, I had only done print design and they hired me.
And a couple months in the manager had to sit me down and be like, I’m not really sure this is working out. This isn’t going so well. And he’s saying, let’s extend this another month and if this just isn’t working out then there’s nothing against you, we’ll just both cut our losses and move on. And I realized a couple things then, it wasn’t that I was bad with design, I learned that it’s super important to have connections and that the work place isn’t just about the work you do, it’s also about having good communication and relationships with the people you work with.
And so it wasn’t that I had a bad relationship with him, I just was doing my work and not asking the right questions.
And so that’s what I think is one of the big things I learned, you need to ask the right questions and make sure your manager knows what you’re doing and make sure you’re vocal about if you have a question, what the type of work your doing is, and if you have a concern because you have to be sort of your own champion since no one is going to toot your horn for you and that can feel really uncomfortable but that is important.
So I guess it’s good to have a little bit of a scare, because I ended up staying there a while and leading the web design team. I went from lowly intern about to get fired to actually leading the whole team so it worked out well in the end.
Q: So what advice would you give to students wanting to pursue graphic design or just art in general for a career?
Hopper: I would say, this sounds a little silly and cliche, but don’t be afraid to ask super uncomfortable questions. One of the big things I found is that there are always people in the room who want to ask the same question you want to but they’re too afraid so there’s always a sigh of relief when someone asks that question.
People also have the tendency to think that we’re all the same, like oh if I find this interesting you will too but find your unique spot where you’re doing thing a little bit different or where you’re a little bit weird and figure out how that works. So find the spot where you fit in where no one else does. I think that’s super important particularly with art but also with design to find your style, what works, and like in product design: being creative with the solutions you come up with.
You always have a different angle than other people do and figuring out what that angle in and capitalizing on that is super important.
Q: Professionally, what would you say is your goal when working with Adobe?
Hopper: I mean honestly, I honestly love what I do right now because I get to lead the team on a design app I absolutely love, I get to do a lot of speaking for Adobe particularly for women, Adobe does a great job speaking up for women and minorities or at least give face time within the company.
I also get to spend a ton of time with artists, I get to build products for the most creative people in the world and make products that allow other people to be creative. And I look at that and think what better place could you be in to help the most creative people in the world be more creative. I mean that’s pretty awesome in my opinion.
Q: So do you have any inspirations? (Any person or things in general)
Hopper: There’s so many, so I’ll give you a couple. As I mentioned, I’m a sucker for typography and so if you followed me around for a day while I was getting my master’s degree, you probably would have seen me with a little hand held projector shining letters all over the place because I was just doing really weird stuff which is kinda what you’re supposed to do in grad school. I really love typography, and while I’m not technical enough to be a type designer, I sort of love learning about typography and I kind of geek out about it so I would say that’s an inspiration.
And then another sort of artistic inspiration, aside from all the well known people in the industry, is my aunt. She is an interior decorator and when I was in middle school, I begged her to hire me and I think she did this out of pity but she hired me.
I helped her with design and decoration for interior spaces and I was like 12 and I had no idea what I was doing and she humored me while also showing that as long as you’re excited to do something, you can do it.
She sort of inspired me to follow what I’m excited and passionate about and gave me the confidence to go after it.
A big thank you to Brooke Hopper getting interviewed for our Professional Artists Corner. Check out her work at Adobe below!
Brooke’s work for Adobe Fresco: https://www.adobe.com/products/fresco.html
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