First-year draws her own path through the field of graphic design

The morning sun rays peeked through Natalie Sypkens’ Rieber Hall window. Sypkens laid out paint brushes, fine point pens and a sketchbook. She tied up her hair, popped in headphones and got to work.

For the first-year undeclared student, graphic design is not just her hobby, but her job. Scroll through Free People’s blog or social media, and one is bound to come across a Sypkens original.

Sypkens first developed her love for sketching in ninth grade while volunteering as an assistant art teacher with a local art studio.

“Art was something I absolutely loved, something that I could get lost in for hours and hours and hours on end,” Sypkens said.

While working in sales at clothing store Brandy Melville, a co-worker connected Sypkens with a new boutique Van De Vort in San Diego County. She helped with social media marketing and window displays. Soon after, Sypkens began teaching herself Photoshop and Illustrator to design a website for the company.

It wasn’t long before the demand for her graphics piled up. Sypken’s floral sketches and hand-painted calligraphy drew the interest of bloggers such as The Skinny Confidential and Blog-Doo, where she was hired as a web designer for clients who were starting up their own blogs.

“I really improved on my designs because I would be working on three different projects a week,” Sypkens said.

Sypkens then worked on graphic, logo and blog design for Eileen Lofgren’s jewelry company, Child of Wild. In the summer of 2015, Sypkens landed a position she had dreamed about since middle school – a blogging internship for the boho clothing company Free People.

“I got a callback at the headquarters in Philadelphia and that was honestly the single most exciting thing that ever happened to me,” Sypkens said.

Her ten-hour days consisted of sketching for blog posts, coordinating with marketing teams and photographing on shoots for Free People.

Now Sypkens works as a freelance graphic designer for the Free People blog. Each week she brings quotes to life for the blog’s horoscope page.

The first step, Sypkens said, is finding a comfortable place to think.

“It’s a little harder because my dorm room isn’t the most inspiring place,” Sypkens said.

She then decides which quote speaks to her the most, often asking friends for input and gathering design inspiration from her previous sketches or Free People’s Pinterest board.

Lighting is key, Sypkens said, especially when taking photographs to layer with her graphics and calligraphy. She snaps photos of anything from flowers and greenery to rustic alleyways and walls.

Up next is the font.

“I either do a brush-strokey font that’s really organic, or a more refined font that I put in Illustrator to make all the curves really smooth,” Sypkens said.

Once the font is finalized, Sypkens adds details such as florals and pen accents for aesthetic effect.

Sypkens’ graphics are not exclusive to Free People. She is currently involved in logo and Tumblr redesign for her sorority.

Maddie Anderson, a first-year business economics student in Sypken’s sorority said Sypkens’ art is a source of motivation and inspiration for others.

“A lot of times that is through some sort of inspirational quote that she beautifully draws on a canvas – the little things,” Anderson said.

Sypkens’ art is a non-stop passion, said MK Kish, a second-year sociology student. Sypkens often doodles and sketches during their study sessions together and posted motivational sticky notes around Kish’s dorm during finals week last quarter with her calligraphy.

“It was so pretty – I just kept it up there, I couldn’t ever throw it away,” Kish said.

Though Sypkens said her work begins with a big-picture idea, attention to detail is critical to each piece.

“If that idea of how this layers on this, and this brush stroke perfectly accents that – if that just came to you, it would be great. But it takes hours and hours of messing around,” Sypkens said. “When I’m designing a website or logos, it’s such a mental game.”