I Think I've Always Been a Designer

I've been thinking about design lately, and I realised something rather obvious.

I've probably been doing it for most of my life.

It actually started back in my secondary school days, which feels like a lifetime ago now. This was before the internet, before social media, before Canva and before you could sit on your phone and watch a ten-minute tutorial showing you how to do practically anything.

Back then, I was taking photographs and drawing landscapes and forests. I was always looking at things, noticing shapes, colours, composition and how everything fitted together. I didn't call it design, obviously. I was just doing something I enjoyed.

Looking back, I can see that the interest was already there.

It just took me a very long time to realise that perhaps this was something I could actually build a career around.

For years, design was something I did alongside everything else. When I was running the château in 2010, I started using Canva to create advertising material, and later I used those skills throughout my network marketing and digital marketing career. I was making graphics, adverts and promotional material because I needed them for whatever I was doing at the time.

I wasn't sitting there thinking, Right, this is going to become my career. It was simply another thing I could do.

Then came Simply French Living.

Donna was starting her own magazine, and at first I handled the business side. Gradually, I found myself moving into the design side as well, and that was when something really changed for me.

Donna actually paid for me to do my Adobe course, which I will always be forever grateful for, and in January 2022 I gained my Adobe qualification.

I'd always known I could make things look good. What Adobe gave me was something different. It taught me the actual design techniques behind what I was doing.

There is a difference between knowing that something looks right and understanding why it looks right.

Learning about design properly gave me that understanding.

It was probably the first time I really thought, Oh. I can actually do this.

From there, my design work just kept developing.

I've designed all sorts over the years: advertising, posters, business stationery, branding, social media graphics, newsletters, brochures, booklets, leaflets, flyers, catalogues, event programmes, digital publications, books and magazines. I've worked with photographs, layouts, typography, imagery and all the fiddly little details that nobody notices when they're right but everybody notices when they're wrong.

Then came the magazines.

Sacred Hearth & Ink came first.

That one was born from wanting to do something that I actually loved.

I'd reached the point where I was fed up with network marketing and digital marketing. I'd spent enough time thinking about algorithms, selling and what people should be doing online. I wanted to make something because I enjoyed making it.

I'd fully embraced my pagan side and wanted somewhere to bring together the things I've loved for years: witchcraft, folklore, plants, gardens, seasonal living, food, stories and all the ordinary bits of life that sit alongside them.

So I created Sacred Hearth & Ink.

I honestly didn't care if it went viral. If one person picked it up, found something useful, learned something new or simply enjoyed sitting down with it and a cup of tea, I'd have been happy.

Of course, it has grown considerably since then.

I'm now producing an entire magazine every month, which is something I still find slightly ridiculous when I stop and think about it.

Each issue takes me around 25 hours to create. That's everything from planning and organising the content to designing the pages, working with images, putting the whole thing together and getting it ready for publication.

Then there's ARK79.

That magazine came from a completely different place.

I've been volunteering with ARK79, and just over a year ago they helped me and my family tremendously during a really difficult period of our lives. I don't need to go into all of that here, but I haven't forgotten it.

When I had the opportunity to give something back, creating a magazine seemed like the obvious thing for me to do.

So now I have two magazines that I work on, for two completely different reasons, but both of them mean an enormous amount to me.

I've also produced books along the way. My Sabbats books, covering food and the Wheel of the Year, are available on Amazon, and Daughters of the Ashes is published through Lulu. And I'm currently in the process of another book that talks more in depth about the sabbats, but that one may not be finished for a while.

There have been plenty of other things too, and that's probably what I love most about design. I don't actually think I could choose just one thing and do it forever.

I love the magazines, absolutely. There's something incredibly satisfying about taking a collection of words, photographs, ideas and pages and turning them into something that feels like a real publication.

But I love design in general.

It's my happy place.

Give me a blank page and a project to work on, and I'm quite content.

I've spent years learning different programmes, figuring out what works, making mistakes, changing things, trying again, and gradually becoming better at something that started as nothing more than an interest when I was a teenager drawing forests and taking photographs.

Sometimes I do wish I'd followed it when I left school.

I wonder where I might have been if I'd recognised then that this was something I could actually pursue.

But hindsight is a great big collection of what ifs, isn't it?

Because the truth is, if I'd followed a completely different path all those years ago, I probably wouldn't be sitting here now doing what I'm doing.

I wouldn't have had all the experiences I've had. I wouldn't have learned all the things I've learned. I wouldn't have met all the people I've met. I wouldn't have ended up creating these magazines or building Dragonfly Rose Publishing House.

Most importantly, I wouldn't be surrounded by the community I have around me now.

The women, friends, contributors, readers and people who support what I'm doing. The people who read the magazines, share them, contribute to them, encourage me and generally put up with me talking about fonts, page layouts and whether something needs moving three millimetres to the left.

You know who you are.

I don't need to name you.

I'm incredibly grateful for every one of you.

So perhaps I didn't miss my chance when I left school.

Perhaps I just took the scenic route.

It took me through businesses, network marketing, France, photography, books, Canva, Adobe, magazines, volunteering, some enormous changes in my life and quite a few unexpected turns to get here.

But I'm here now.

And I'm doing something I genuinely love.

That's probably the best part of the whole story.

I finally figured out that the thing I enjoyed doing all those years ago wasn't just a hobby.

It was always a part of me.

I just needed a few decades to catch up with it.

Tia X