Q&A: Abby Leighton on Designing National Park Souvenirs

Did the move inspire a change in your design work?

Definitely. My senior thesis was basically this book called National Parks Maps where I illustrated a map of every national park. It started at the beginning of senior year and I didn’t finish it until after I moved to Moab—I was living here for about four or five months before I actually finished it.

Even just working on that project, and then moving out here and finding inspiration in different typography and signage and landscapes out here, I could definitely see my design style shift. Looking back at maps that I made when I first started that project, I would do it completely differently now.

What is your relationship with social media like as a freelance artist?

I definitely have a love-hate relationship with it. You can build a really awesome community on there. It’s where I get most of my income—most of my clients come from Instagram and other social media platforms, like Pinterest and Reddit, but it can also be very easy to compare yourself to other people and then feel down about yourself.

And the whole “Oh, you have to have a posting schedule, and you have to post on your story multiple times every day, and you have to post four times a week, and make reels…” I feel like there’s this culture around that that is pretty toxic and overwhelming. Social media management itself is its own job. There shouldn’t be as much pressure; you shouldn’t become irrelevant if you’re not posting on Instagram for two weeks.

Do you have advice for photographers or artists who want to work for themselves and get into the freelance world?

I would say just do it, but you do have to have some leverage to fall back on. You have to build up the freelance work first, before you quit your job, unless you have a significant amount of savings. You need to be able to support yourself for a long period of time. Get your work out there and share it, even if you’re just cold emailing and DMing people—people shame that, but honestly, the worst that can happen is they say no, and the best that can happen is they say yes.