Trust the Creativity
k o k o m o r r i
01 Design School
What made you want to go to design school and pursue design as a career?
The first time I had that conscious thought was Design 166. I went in not even knowing what it was gonna be. But after that class, I was pretty convinced. I was like, “If I don’t get in here, I’m gonna transfer schools and go somewhere where I can study design.” And luckily, I got in. That was the first time I made that choice for myself, but if I think back, I had always been a kid who really liked art, and I was always drawn to doodling letters and things like that. But it had just never solidified as like, “Oh, that means that I should be a designer.”
What was your favorite and least favorite part of going through design school?
Being surrounded by people who are going through the same thing and love the same thing. We’re lucky in that program that it’s small enough that you know your cohort. Some of my best friends now are people that I was in the program with. The environment that it creates where you’re with these people all the time sometimes isn’t 100% healthy, but I came out of it with really good relationships and fond memories.
It’s hard because it requires a lot of you; I was just working all the time. And I know that result-wise, the work that I put in became the skills that I have now. So it’s not that I necessarily regret it, but I do think that it can set you up on a track to burnout, which is exactly what happened to me. After you graduate, you have to learn balance because I took the habits that school taught me and brought them into my career, and that’s just not sustainable. So I would say that my least favorite part was falling into the hustle/burnout culture.
Meet Koko
Koko Morrill is a brand and type designer currently based in New York City. She graduated from the University of Washington’s Visual Communication Design program in 2020 and now works at The Working Assembly, a branding agency located in the heart of Manhattan.
What do you think is the most valuable lesson that you learned during your time in design school?
No one is ever going to be perfectly well-rounded. One of the greatest things that I took away is the balance of that interreliance, of working with people who fill your gaps. I would consider myself lucky in this, but one of my friends, her name is Maya, she works at Porta Rocha right now; we work so well together. We have skills that are slightly different, so in a project, they mesh together really well. It’s always good to try to improve places that you might not have the most skill, but it’s also just as valuable to learn your weaknesses so you can find the people that are going to fill that gap, so you’re not putting 100% of the pressure on yourself all the time.
There’s going to be certain classes that you really excel in, and certain classes that you might not be super great at, and that doesn’t necessarily mean anything about you as a designer or person.
Is there anything that you wish that you could do over from your time in design school?
I definitely made mistakes but mistakes are things you learn from. I remember in Marks and Symbols, the icon project, the girl who was my partner was like, “You’re controlling everything,” which was true. She was feeling like she wasn’t being heard and like she wasn’t able to contribute meaningfully. And I do feel like that is one of my flaws when it comes to myself as a designer. I tend to have a really strong creative vision, which can be a strength. But it’s like, “How do I work with people to make it work for everybody?” That was a moment where I really was like, “Oh, okay. I’m glad you said that.” It’s still something that I’m working on, and I don’t necessarily regret that situation because I learned from it.
Is there any particularly memorable anecdote that when you think of design school, you think of that one moment?
I remember one of my groupmates in Marks and Symbols slicing his finger open in the middle of the night with an X-acto knife and we had to pour vodka in it because nothing was open, we weren’t able to buy medical supplies. So we had vodka. Why did we have vodka? But we did.
I remember that groupmate and a different groupmate went into the other room and he was like, “We’re gonna pour vodka on it.” And he was screaming. That was definitely a memorable one.
02 TypeParis
How did you end up going to TypeParis?
Because of COVID, I graduated and just went full force into work, and that’s all I did. So I did sort of burn out after a while and ended up quitting in August of 2021. I worked at a cake shop for six months after that. It wasn’t my intention to be testing, “Do I really want to be doing this?” But after six months of that, I was like, “Okay, I do want to design again.” And that’s when I applied to a job posting on Instagram, and I was like, “Whatever. Why not try?” I ended up getting a contract, and I came to New York for a month because of that and did some projects for a couple of different studios.
03 Life as a Designer
It was while I was in New York that I was doing design work for an event that was put on by this chocolate brand. After the event, the founder and her husband took me out for dinner. They talked about how she was originally a lawyer and he was in tech. They both went to Paris together, she went to pastry school and he studied wine.
And they were like, “We were so broke and we had to quit our jobs to do this. But that was the happiest that we ever were.” And then she ended up pursuing making chocolate and created this brand.
I had heard about TypeParis before, and I knew that the application deadline was coming up, so I was sort of thinking about it. But I feel like that was my sign. I even said to them, “Oh, I was thinking about doing this program, and it’s also in Paris, and the deadline is coming up.” And they were like, “Just do it. Do it. We want you to do it. Sorry we’re being parents to you right now, but you should do it!” And I did, and that was last summer.
Tell me more about it!
TypeParis really solidified my love of type; I really, really fell in love with it there. And since I was coming out of this burnout, it also gave me confidence. Honestly, coming out of it, I was in a period of post-TypeParis depression. I had just spent six weeks with people from all over the world who love the same thing. And type design is one of those things where you talk to most people about it and they have no idea what it is. So I went from this environment where everybody understands and loves it and returned to the real world. It honestly felt like I was in a cult for a little while where I didn’t see the rest of the world and I was with only these 17 other people.
What do you do for work now, and what do you like and dislike about it?
I work at a design agency. As a whole, I like that branding is something that is using my creative brain in a way that feels really fulfilling. I think that when you compare it to student work, there’s just a lot more constraints. There’s budgets that you have to worry about, there’s your clients’ feedback and taste… Often a project is not going to look the way that you thought it would. There’s just a lot more politics and business involved in creating things that, at this point, I’ve gotten more or less used to. But it was a little bit discouraging at the beginning. So I guess what I like is that it feels fulfilling and exciting and like I’m constantly learning new things. And then what I don’t like is that often projects have constraints that are out of my control that affect the way that they turn out.
Do you have an example of a recent project you’ve been working on?
There’s a taco shop in New York called King David Tacos, they have a cart and a shop, and we did the branding for that. And that one was interesting because they’re from Austin, Texas, and they wanted to be distinctly Austin, but also distinctly New York, because they started the business in New York. So it was kind of interesting to mix a very Southern cowboy visual language with the street style of New York. I ended up doing a typeface for it, and then actually, one of my friends did the illustration. So it was a cool collaboration.
What do you love most about being a designer; what is it about design specifically that makes you happy?
Creativity. I get to use my creative energy. For me, there’s a few things that I need to feel fulfilled. It’s like my fulfillment pie, and a good chunk of that fulfillment pie is just feeling creative. Being able to think of it that way has also helped me to feel more consistently fulfilled because I used to think of it as “The fulfillment comes from the output,” but now I think of it as “The fulfillment comes from me getting to use my creative energy.” I am constantly plagued by wanting to make the best work ever and wanting to make work I’m proud of.
That will always be a goal of mine, but I just try to remember that the reason I like this is because I get to be creative, and I get to work with other people who also are creative in different ways that I’m not.
What’s been your favorite and least favorite moment as a designer?
There was a project that I was working on at the studio where I used to be, and we were collaborating with a much larger design agency. We were probably a month into the project, and then we were just suddenly taken off of it by the larger agency. And that was the first time that I had really experienced something like that. With design, you end up putting a lot of yourself into it, and then when it’s abruptly cut off, it can feel really bad. There’s also that doubt of, “Did I do something wrong here?” It’s really easy to get into that spiral, but at the same time, that’s just how it goes sometimes. It was really disappointing at the time, but looking back on it, I’m like, “That happened. And that doesn’t mean anything necessarily.”
On the other side of that, things like TypeParis have been some of the best moments. I’m a designer who has an artist mindset. With TypeParis, I was able to create something that was from me. Being able to work with people who are really, really good at what they do and getting that validation was really valuable. Validation feels good in the moment because we’re human, but I don’t think that necessarily means that you should want validation all the time, or that you should avoid rejection all the time.
I hope that in the future, my answer changes, and there will be more moments where I feel like I’m affecting other people or the world in a positive way. I just haven’t necessarily gotten there. But even receiving the email from you was great. That was honestly a highlight for me.
That was a moment where I thought, “I’ve been doing this enough that I can have an impact on somebody else because of this.”
04 Advice from Koko
Earlier, you mentioned dealing with burnout. How did you work through that? Do you have any specific strategies?
I’m going through a little bit of a slump right now myself. And I don’t have a perfect solution. I don’t think there is one, but I do think that trying to pace yourself even in the periods where you’re not burnt out is what’s going to keep you from burning out. I don’t want to say it’s too late once you’ve already hit that burnout, but it’s a little bit like with food. You don’t want to be absolutely starving when you eat or you’re gonna eat three meals at once and feel sick, and you’re gonna fall into a bad cycle. You have to reserve your energy, even when you have it, so that you can be consistent, as with anything in life. It’s about balance.
If you do hit that point of burnout, trying to step away as much as you can is helpful, even though that feels super counterintuitive sometimes. You’re like, “I’m feeling burnt out, so I’m feeling less productive, so I need to put more time in.” But that just becomes a negative feedback loop.
What are some words of encouragement or advice that you have for the future generations of designers?
Design is something that is unique because it allows you to be creative and express yourself, but without quite the level of risk and vulnerability that being an artist would take. As somebody who struggles with vulnerability in many realms, I know that I couldn’t put my most vulnerable, traumatic experiences into art that becomes public. And so design is something that gives you the opportunity to harness your creative energy and gives you an output place that is very unique.
It is an opportunity to create things that you’re really proud of, but don’t put the pressure on yourself to change the world. I think that there is sometimes that rhetoric that floats around of “Design can change the world,” and you don’t need to necessarily do that. If you just are creating, at some point, hopefully, you’ll look back and you’ll see that the things you did were either something that you’re proud of, or contributed meaningfully in some way.
Trust the creativity that you have, and don’t feel like you need to squeeze every drop of it out with every single project that you have.
You have something inherent that will come through and you don’t have to force it all the time. That has been my lesson that I have learned, and have been trying to continue to learn. I can trust myself and I don’t need to be burning steam so hard that I burn out. It’s actually more important for me as a human being, but also to the work, that I’m able to sustain myself and my mental health and not put so much pressure on myself.
About the author
Sofia Arellano is an undergraduate at the University of Washington studying Visual Communication Design. She is passionate about publication design and typography, and hopes to one day move to New York City to work and further her design education in graduate school.