#vichcraft

Could you introduce yourself? I’m Jenna Blazevich, the founder and designer behind Vichcraft Design Studio in Chicago, Illinois. With Vichcraft, I specialize in branding design for small businesses and nonprofits, design and produce a line of intersectional feminist products, and teach oblique calligraphy.

How did you hear about Babes Ride Out? What was your first ride out like? My introduction to Babes Ride Out was actually through a Chicago illustrator friend of mine Jourdon Gullett, who made a tee design for (I believe) BRO 2014. At the time, I didn’t ride a motorcycle yet, but immediately took an interest in what Babes Ride Out is about. I’d long wanted to learn to ride and get my m-class, since I’d grown up around motorcycles and had been dating my boyfriend who restores vintage bikes. My first B.R.O. wasn’t until a couple years later in Joshua Tree, and it was full of such great energy and camaraderie.

What’s your favorite thing about Babes Ride Out? What are you most excited about this year’s event? Babes Ride Out is such a great event because it’s born out of a real (and frustrating) need for more celebration and inclusivity around female motorcycle ridership. Plus, it’s a genuinely beautiful event in the way that the branding and merch and on-site installations are all thoughtfully crafted by people in their community. I won’t be able to attend the East Coast ride, but I’ll be sponsoring and participating in a ladies-only ride and campout in Chicago called Babes in Motoland this fall.

Your top five things to bring to Babes Ride Out? Water bottle for water Aluminum water bottle for extra gas reserve Sunscreen Basic tools + zip ties + first aid Girls to the front pins for new friends!

Tells us a little about Vichcraft.  How did you come up with Vichcraft? What was the inspiration behind it? Vichcraft, as a concept, was born in late 2015 when I had just turned 25 and received an offer to work full-time at my dream job. At the time, I had built up five years of experience freelancing on the side of jobs and school, and instead of taking on the dream job, I made a major shift into full-time self-employment. It was important to me that I come up with an ownable and memorable name for my new curated portfolio (I had previously been working under my first and last name, and published so many different projects that I had no identifiable specialty). I came up with the name “Vichcraft” because it’s a play on my last name (Blazevich), my love of hand craft, and of witchcraft and feminism.  

What’s it like to run Vichcraft? What are some of the most rewarding things and what things do you think folks might not realize about running a business? Running Vichcraft is a never-ending test of how much I can multi-task, remember things, plan ahead, and do my best to still be present. Since most of what I share on my website and on my social media accounts are finished projects, I’m not sure very many people realize how much time I spend on unglamorous, super boring and frustrating administrative stuff per day. I think it’s a common thing to fantasize about the freedom self-employment, but it’s so stressful to be the one person that every issue falls on 24 hours a day. Since I have this quality of hating to feel pigeon-holed into a specific thing, I created my line of product as a consistent outlet for myself to act as my own creative director and make work that I love and that pushes me to try out lettering styles that my clients don’t ask for.  It’s been really rewarding to have such an outstanding amount of positive responses to my products, and all of that has directly affected how much I’ve been able to grow my shop in it’s first year.

What’s your creative process like? How long does it take for the idea to reach fruition? My process is sort of all over the place, but I generally work very fast. I generally say that I work half on paper and half in the computer, and I like it best that way. Whether I’m working on a logo for a client, or I’m sketching a mural for an installation or designing a new patch for my shop, I always start with a bunch of thumbnail sketches in pencil. If the client is in charge of deciding which to concept finalize, I move on to vectorizing their logo in Illustrator either with my iPad and Apple Pencil, or with the pen tool and a mouse. If the project is something for my shop and I’m acting as Creative Director to myself, I can start with sketches for an initial idea in the morning, and be at the screen printing co-op I belong to working on printing the final product that night.

What are some of the important issues you address in your art? When was the first time you decided to combine that with your brand? Vichcraft has (understandably) always been very tied to me personally, and the causes, social issues, pieces of writing, and aesthetic styles that interest me as a person. The election year of 2016 was my second year of running Vichcraft, and I was (and am) still developing the most effective ways to use my skills, voice and platform to speak on topics that I’m passionate about. Post-election, it is still one of my main goals with Vichcraft to do whatever I can to contribute to organizations and projects that are working to resist and counter the moves being made by the current administration. Furthermore, it is extremely important to me that I create feminist work that is as inclusive and intersectional as possible, because feminism is currently being diluted in meaning by companies monetizing the movement, and by self-proclaimed feminists focusing on issues that only relate to women who look and live like themselves. Failing to consider other classes, identities, races, bodies, and religions when doing feminist work results in an inability to progress and unite in a collective fight, and the opposition gains more leverage as a result.

If you had to choose one of your designs as your favorite, which would it be and why? “The City Beautiful” piece that I made for Typeforce in January of 2015 was the first piece that I made under the name “Vichcraft,” and it’s still what I’m most proud of. It marked a significant and intentional shift into creating lettering work that more closely relates to the issues and topics that I personally care about. It also really challenged my ability to create sculpture work within a very tight timeline, as well as my writing skills for the initial proposal. It’s still the project that I’ve worked on under the name “Vichcraft” that I’m probably the most proud of.

Who are some of your favorite past and contemporary artists? Some of the artists who inspire me most are: Alphonse Mucha, Teagan White, Kathleen Hanna, Marian Bantjes, Laura Jane Grace, Doyald Young, Cat Coven, Hellcats, Louise Fili, Hydro74, Jourdon Gullett, & so many more.

You run some really cool calligraphy workshops in Chicago!   How did you get interested in calligraphy and typography?   What are some of your favorite things about calligraphy? I taught my first public calligraphy workshops in the fall of 2014, just before launching Vichcraft, and I’ve taught at least one beginner workshop per month since then. The format of the class has generally remained the same: introduce the tools, talk about the craft, work through exercises, then graduate to lowercase letterforms. I do, however, think the workshop has evolved into something that people value attending because they gain the ability to utilize me as a resource both during and after the class. I get almost an equal amount of questions about how I started freelancing, what was required to start selling product, etc., as I do about the actual craft of calligraphy, and I enjoy offering myself as a real person who can help answer these questions (versus whatever answers would otherwise come up in a Google search). This is a big reason why I want to continue teaching calligraphy workshops, and possibly other types of workshops, in the future.

Is there a new medium you haven’t tried yet but want to start learning about? There are always so many! I had my first solo art show a few months ago, and I commissioned a custom neon sign from a Chicago artist. I’d love to learn to make my own neon one day, but I know it’s extremely tedious. For that same show, my boyfriend and I took apart, stripped, painted and restored a 1972 Honda CL350 to be a “Handmaid’s Tale” inspired piece in the show. We had to work very quickly on the project (we only had nine days to do all of the work), but I’d love to keep working on designing, customizing and restoring some project bikes.

Favorite Vans? and how would you describe your style? I wear black or grey low-tops everyday, and they’re my favorite shoes. My style is pretty androgynous, and my outfits almost always include an oversized black band tee, bike commuter pants, and my black trucker jacket with “Girls to the Front” screen printed on the back, and pockets full of stickers to give out to anyone who asks where I got my jacket! Also, my helmet and a bolo tie are go-to accessories.

What’s on the horizon after Babes Ride out and what exciting projects do you have coming up for 2017? Along with some of my best friends, I’m a partner on a game called TumbleSeed that is being released on May 2nd. It’s 2.5 years in the making, and I’m so thankful to have been involved. I’ll also be bringing Vichcraft on the road to a bunch of craft fairs and conferences around the country this summer, and I’ll be doing so with my very first employee! My friend Ellen will be joining my studio in the role of studio manager, and I’m extremely excited to see how much Vichcraft can grow with her on board, and freeing up a huge amount of my time to focus more on creative work.

What would you say to folks who wanted to follow in your footsteps and start their own business? Don’t. JK but I’d say to definitely be very critical of whether or not you possess the qualities that would make a great candidate for self-employment like extreme attention to detail, self-motivation, obsessiveness, time and money management skills, the ability to compartmentalize, etc. Also, I’d encourage you to seek advice from people who know both the work that you’re making, and also how you are as a person and to encourage those people to give you their honest opinion on whether you might be ready for self-employment. During my time in school, I freelanced and also worked at six internships, and stayed in touch with many past co-workers as I continued through school. Those people became my mentors, and I was able to learn things from them that I didn’t in school, and also develop relationships with them that encouraged honesty when it came time to decide if I was ready to launch a business. I’d also suggest starting out by freelancing on the side of a consistent job. When I launched Vichcraft, I already had five years of freelance experience under my belt, which meant that I had already given myself the chance to work out a lot of the kinks with handling client relationships, managing money and time, etc. Giving yourself the chance to figure a few of those things out while still having a consistent paycheck from a full-time job is much less scary then jumping in head first.