Meet Jon Chaiet | Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jon Chaiet and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jon, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
After 15+ years as a designer and studying/working within various disciplines, I found myself at a place in my career and confidence in my work that pushed me through that threshold into starting my own design practice. Essentially after working so long for large companies, which I enjoyed at the time, I realized how much money our teams were spending on outside design and decided to try staking out on my own. I had somehow built one of those fabled networks of connections across the past companies I worked at, and before leaving behind my steady 9-5 I worked towards accumulating an increasing amount of freelance jobs. I think it probably took about six months to get to the point where the time I was spending in the cubicle was becoming the lower-paying job. Thinking back on it now 6 years later it feels like it was a pretty gradual transition.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m so lucky to have found art at a very young age, and even luckier to have parents who encouraged it as enthusiastically as mine did. I’m not sure how typical it is but I’ve kind of always known I wanted to be an artist. Or rather that I was compelled to make art and then once I learned you could do that for a living, decided that would be my goal. I studied obsessively and started getting paid for illustration work when I was 16, landed a design job freshman year of college and worked all through school. It’s pretty much the only job I’ve ever had.

I think what I’m most proud of in my professional work is the dedication to improving my craft, and continual evolution. What I love about commercial design and illustration is the balance of creativity and craft. You have to solve complex communication problems without a lot of artistic ego in ways that not only inform and delight the audience, but also work within a strict framework regarding the media you produce. I really love this problem-solving, and especially how advancing your craftsmanship within the framework produces real-world benefit.

What I hope the audience takes away from my work is just a small bit of joy while they interact with it. One of the greatest treasures of this gig is that from project to project you are continually forced to learn. In order to truly communicate through design you really do have to immerse yourself in the subject matter in order to create a shared language visually. And so when I add a detail or a color or a subtle reference to the work, I’m communicating to the audience in a way that goes unspoken; hoping that when someone recognizes it that spark of childlike fun lights up in them as if they’re in on some shared joke.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My wife Marissa! If I’ve been able to build anything of my practice so far it’s due to the strong foundation of trust and support she gives freely and with kindness. Truly couldn’t ask for a better teammate in life.

Website: chaiet.com

Image Credits
All Artwork: Jon Chaiet