When Jessica Hische visited Houston and spoke to a sold-out crowd of AIGA Houston members and design-community attendees, we expected many things: Jessica’s impressive lettering, some notes on her recent foray into type design, and glittery .gifs of cats, but also to leave inspired and reinvigorated. And we did—in fact, we feel like Batman.

Batman logo, image courtesy of sparehed.com

“I am Batman, and you can be too,” began the presentation. “This will make sense later,” Jessica promised before moving through slide after slide exploring elements of her process, like procrastiworking—the work you do when you’re not working—her type design for Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, and her love of side projects to keep herself excited about her work. “And now back to Batman.”

Bruce Wayne and Batman, image courtesy of comixzone.cz

As Jessica explains, Batman is inherently two people—Bruce Wayne, a wealthy business man, and Batman, a masked crime fighter—and one cannot exist without the other. Batman can’t have fancy crime-fighting toys without Bruce Wayne’s largesse, and Bruce Wayne can’t have personal fulfillment without Batman’s heroism. Both are involved in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.

“Should I Work For Free?” a Handy and Humorous Flowchart side project, image courtesy of Jessica Hische’s website.

In other words: don’t quit your day job. “Batmanify yourself: balance fun work with work that pays the bills,” Jessica suggested, because without your day job, or money, you don’t have funding to continue working on fun projects at night, which in turn inspire what you do during your day job, which in turn funds your projects at night, and so on. Continue to repeat this formula, and you’ll always feel inspired and productive.

Jessica’s Doodle Blog side project, image courtesy of Jessica Hische’s website

Jessica also emphasized a designer should always be realistic, but continue to push themselves to be diversified, specialized, and above all knowledgeable and well-researched about their work. Do this, and you’ll feel a lot like Batman.

Crowd at Jessica Hische, image courtesy of Khalil AbuSharekh via AIGA Houston’s Flickr

AIGA Houston felt inspired and honored to have the skilled letterer speak to our community. To see how other attendees felt during Jessica’s talk, check out the event’s Twitter feed using the hash tag #JessicaHischeHTX.

For more information on future AIGA Houston events, visit the events page, and, as always, keep up with current events via our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.