Artist and illustrator Jade Purple Brown is as friendly and self-assured as the stylish characters she portrays in her works: bold, confident, and filled with joy.

The Brooklyn-based talent and frequent Adobe collaborator created this year’s splash page artwork for Adobe Illustrator. While Brown has worked with plenty of brands in her career — from Refinery29 to Sephora to TikTok — the commission for Illustrator is especially exciting, because she uses the program daily for her own work. “I didn’t even have this as a goal, or think that doing this was a possibility,” she says. “But once I got that email, I was just blown away.”

Brown created the final artwork, which features a woman peering out an arched window and into sunny skies, in the spring of 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was taking hold of countries around the world. Like many others, she was spending more time indoors, looking inward, yet remained steadfastly optimistic of what the future would hold.

Here, we speak with Brown about finding — and creating — joy in her work wherever possible, running her own business, and how she stays motivated every day.

How did you get your start in design and illustration?

Growing up, I was always a very artistic, very creative kid. I would always be drawing and making different things, and when I was in middle school and high school, I was really into fashion and styling. That’s what I thought I wanted to do for a living, so I ended up studying fashion marketing and management. My parents told me, “Of course, you don’t need a degree to style, but we want you to have a degree, so you’re getting a degree.”

Business is always a great background to have, but the really cool thing about this program was that it exposed me to a PR and marketing class that taught the basics of Adobe Photoshop, a bit of Illustrator, and a bit of InDesign — mostly so that we could make our own promotional materials. But when I started working with those programs, I was like, “Wait, why am I so good at this? Why do I enjoy this more than all the things I’ve been studying?” From there, I just started researching like crazy, watching online tutorials and figuring out how to use the programs. Through that research, I had the realization that this could be a career path.

It’s incredible to hear that you’re mostly self-taught because your style is so distinctly unique, and you’ve found much success in your illustration work.

Growing up, I didn’t have anybody in my life who was an artist, or a graphic designer, or an illustrator; I just didn’t know anything about that world. I didn’t know the possibilities until college, so I kind of had a late start — because it was in my very last year. Once I graduated, I continued to do a lot of studying and research, and just started to put together my own portfolio.

Starting out, how did you go about building your portfolio? Do you remember what some of your earliest commissions were for?

When I first started, I was more focused on graphic design — not so much on illustration; that came a little later. But I just started piecing together a portfolio by looking at a lot of different creatives that inspired me, and trying to find common links between them.

One of those people was Leslie David, who does a lot of branding work. I used to study her portfolio all the time, see how she wrote about her projects, how she would explain them and lay them out. Looking at things from other people’s portfolios, I would think, “Okay, I need some branding projects. Let me make a little fake logo for an imaginary company just to get started.”

As for illustration, it was a lot of trial and error. When I started, my goal was to create two pieces a week, just for practice. I would share those two pieces on my Instagram — to get feedback and see what people were drawn to and liking, and also just to see my own work and figure out what I liked. With each piece, I’d ask myself, “What do you like about this? What do you not like about this?” From doing that internal feedback with myself, I would apply that to the very next illustration I did. Slowly but surely, I just kind of found my own style, and figured out what I really like. Instagram was like my art-school critique [laughs].

Your works feature a wonderful sense of joy, confidence, and color. Can you tell us how you get started when you’re working, and what inspires your creative process?

The overall theme of all my work is, as you say, joy: I want people to feel good when they see my work. A lot of my work features characters who are Black and people of color — something that I didn’t see a lot of [in art and design] growing up. So I think that comes partly from just wanting other people to see themselves within my work. And no matter what race you are, when you see my work, I want you to feel good. I want you to feel optimistic about your future and the possibilities of life, in general.

When it comes to my color palette, colors just evoke so many emotions. For me, I want to evoke joy and fun, so I use a lot of punchy colors, and then I’ll also balance them out with more neutrals, browns, blacks, and whites. I love really juicy, mouthwatering colors.

“When you see my work, I want you to feel good. I want you to feel optimistic about your future and the possibilities of life, in general.”

It’s so cool to see the strong fashion influence in your work, which speaks to your degree in fashion marketing and management. As an independent designer and illustrator, do you find that’s also helped you navigate the entrepreneurial aspect of your practice?

That’s a really great question, because when I graduated, I thought, “Wow, that was a waste of time,” but it really wasn’t! A lot of the things I learned in school I can apply now, like my commitment to posting twice a week on Instagram. That’s a form of marketing, and planning around that to make sure people are consistently seeing my work is really important.

A lot of artists are still a little nervous about putting themselves out there — which I have definitely felt from time to time — but just knowing the power that you gain from sharing your work, and letting people know your full capabilities, has helped me push myself to not be afraid to connect with people. It’s about making it easy for people to hire you, and thinking about how you present yourself and your work. It’s about asking yourself, “Do people clearly understand what you do? Are they brought into your world? If they reach out for a project, do they know exactly what you’d be good for?” That all ties into marketing and branding.

What inspired the artwork that was selected for the Adobe Illustrator splash page?

The team chose a piece I created at the very beginning of quarantine — it was during the Tiger King phase, where we were just like, “Okay, we’re home, and we’re watching this” — but I was a little bummed at the time, because I had some really great projects on the horizon and wasn’t quite sure what would happen. So I created this piece highlighting the feeling of waiting, but being hopeful through uncertainty. You see a girl, peering out of the window and her hair’s blowing in the wind, and she’s looking outward.

The first time I saw my work [as the final splash page] was on the Illustrator on the iPad app. That was really cool, because the app was brand new. Downloading it and seeing it load up, I was like, “Whoa, this is real.” Then as it went live on the desktop version, I was just… blown away. It’s definitely something in my career that I’m always going to look back on — like, this is very up there, it’s the highlight.

What are you most excited about working on next?

Right now, I’m really interested in product design, and seeing how my illustration work can transform into different objects. I just recently designed two throw blankets — just because I felt a little overwhelmed from client work. It had been so long since I had created for myself, and I’ve always wanted to create products. So I decided to dedicate some time to figuring that out, and have just recently launched those. It’s been so fun, and I want to try to make other things. I like seeing my stuff in a 3D form and knowing that it can be in other people’s homes in a different way than just an art print.

Any advice to share with other freelancers or independent illustrators on finding their own style?

Take time for yourself, think about who you are, and what you can contribute to the world. Think about the things you thought were missing growing up, the things that you want to see more of, and just practice until it forms into something that’s uniquely, clearly, you.

Practice as much as possible. Really hone in on the things that make you who you are, and try to bring that into your work. It can be difficult because there are a lot of distractions to see what everybody else is doing. But I think it’s really important to take that time out for yourself, figure out what you really love, what really excites you, and give yourself that grace to remember that you’re practicing, and that you’re going to get better. You’re going to have to make a lot of things to figure out what feels the most like you. And once you do that, you’ll be good.