Catherine Mitsunaga

I attribute my success to the mentorship I received early in my career from two women, Carolyn and Arlene, who owned a print shop in Hawaii. When I graduated, school taught me a lot of theoretical knowledge and software like Photoshop and Illustrator, but these two lovely ladies taught me everything I know about printing from the bottom up. They would take me to print shops to see how things were actually done, like running 20,000 booklets for conventions. I still keep in touch with them - they're both semi-retired now. If it wasn't for them, I don't think I'd be as successful, or I'd have the gumption to do the things I'm doing. One of the biggest things they always told me was: 'Catherine, if it's too difficult, there's gotta be an easier way.' I've always carried that with me throughout my career. Not to say we're taking shortcuts, but if I'm banging my head with a piece of software, I step back and realize there should be a process for this, there's an easier way to do it. That's been one of the biggest things I've ever carried with me.

The best career advice I've ever received came from my two mentors, Carolyn and Arlene. They always told me: 'Catherine, if it's too difficult, there's gotta be an easier way.' I've always applied that throughout my career. Not to say we're taking shortcuts, but if I am banging my head with a piece of software, I step back and realize that means I'm not doing it right, that means there's an easy way, that means there should be a process for this. When I step back and take a look, I find out that I could actually do it a different way. That's been one of the biggest things I've ever carried with me throughout my career.

Love your craft, love your craft. If it is drawing that you love, lean into that. If it's layout and coordination and planning, making wireframes for a website, and that's what you love, lean into that, because graphic design is so big and so varied. Some graphic designers I know only make web ads, commercials, and it is such a big thing, you can get easily overwhelmed. But if you concentrate on the one thing that you absolutely love, you'll pick up all these extra things along the way. I always thought, you follow the passion, you follow what comes naturally, and everything else will work out. Don't fight it.

My top three values are, first and foremost, being grounded. Because the nature of my job is difficult - deadlines will not push back for you. If that magazine has to go out, if that website has to launch, you're working till midnight. So if your family grounds you, if your religion grounds you, if taking time off for yourself grounds you, find that faith that you have in something that will ground you, because everything else can work out around it, as long as you're being supported with that. Because if you're going crazy at 1 o'clock in the morning and you're like, I don't know which shade of blue this is anymore, you need to be able to say, look, I got this, we know this is gonna be fine, my kids are fine, or I'm going to church tomorrow, or I have a spa day after this. Second would be discipline - a discipline where either you're making your own schedule, in my case. I know a lot of people who tried to go on their own as graphic designers, and it was difficult to make a schedule. They had young children, or they can't work at midnight, and that's okay, because as moms, we always have to be flexible, so finding the kind of discipline that works for you. And then, just having fun. My last one would be having fun. Because if you're not into it, if you're not having fun, you are perusing shades of blue at 2 in the morning, and either you're gonna hate it, or you're gonna love it. So you gotta stack the odds in your favor. You gotta like it. You have to like it, and if you love it, that's even better.