The 26-year-old, who is originally from Hamilton, New Zealand but has been living in Auckland for the last eight years, continues to carve an incandescent career for herself. Jessica's design talent was utilised at the Groove Guide/Real Groove (magazine) for two years, she is currently the graphic designer at the Auckland Art Gallery.
Earlier this year I caught up with the gifted bohemian to discover that she has been guided by some of industry's heavyweights. It was also revealed that her ultimate professional goal is to develop her own business in order to create her own "awesome stuff".
This is Jessica van Dammen in her own words.
Tell me a bit about your professional background?
"I studied Fine Art at Elam, Auckland University concentrating on painting and illustration. I worked in fashion retail part time while studying then after graduating worked full time at Gordon Harris. Then a friend opened a fashion boutique down town and wanted me to work there so I took the offer. While I was working at the store I would occasionally be an assistant to fashion stylist Atip Wananuruks at some shoots which was fun to be a part of. Also, while I was working at the store a piece from my graduation show was chosen for The Glaister Ennor New Graduate Art Award show at Oedipus Rex gallery in Auckland CBD, I won the Glaister Ennor staff choice award - this kind of gave me the pat on the back/nudge I think I needed to move into a more creative field.
"I started a diploma at Media Design School and made posters for my brother's band in the weekends. This introduced me to his manager who got me designing posters for other bands and artist's he managed.
"A few days after finishing my diploma at MDS I was called by Adam Bryce from Noise Media who had seen some of my work. He was starting a men's fashion, art and culture magazine called The New Order and wanted me to design it. I started working for him straight away, producing two issues of The New Order, logos for Plaything Gallery and Support The Independents, media kits etc. pretty much anything Noise Media was up to me to design. Up until it got too hard for me to live on the few dollars I managed to get out of it. It was pretty heart breaking to have to give up something you loved doing and believed in because you couldn't afford to continue. But that's the way the creative industry rolls - as I was finding out.
"Soon after I finished up at Noise Media I got a phone call from the Editor of The Groove Guide (Leonie Hayden) who I had met at a party and had been a fan of for quite some time. The job as designer of Real Groove was up for grabs and she thought I should apply for it. I didn't end up getting the Real Groove job, however, was given the job of the designer of The Groove Guide which was left open by the previous designer being moved onto Real Groove. I was actually really happy as I really wanted to work with Leonie Hayden and LOVED The Groove Guide. Leonie and I worked really well together and managed to grow the magazine 62 per cent (making The Groove Guide the fastest growing weekly magazine in New Zealand) during our time as a team. I also won the MPA Designer of The Year Award in the Youth and Pop Culture category in 2010, making 2010 a pretty awesome year for The Groove Guide.
"The designer of Real Groove left so I took over designing Real Groove while continuing to design the weekly The Groove Guide as well. This was hard work and often very stressful however I got through 3 months (3 issues plus a redesign of Real Groove) before we were told Real Groove was no longer going to continue. It was here that the publishers decided to combine Real Groove with The Groove Guide to create Groove Guide. This was fun for me as I got to choose nice new paper stock and re-jig the magazine to take over it's new A4 size. However, the bosses kept making weird decisions and it got to the point where the Groove Guide was no longer the magazine I had fallen in love with so long ago, so the passion that had kept me going on the wage I was on wasn't there anymore so I decided to hand my notice in. I didn't have anything to go onto, however applied for a couple of jobs the night after I handed my notice in and got a job at FairFax Media the next day. So now I am designing the advertising features for Sunday Star Times, which I really enjoy and am really happy to be around such awesome people everyday."
You are the designer at The Groove Guide, define this role?
"While I was the designer at The Groove Guide I would design the magazine each week. Other responsibilities I put on myself were to re-create the e-newsletters making them more interesting and fun to click into. I would keep the gigs up to date on the website and add all the live photos from the gigs that week into our online gallery. Other responsibilities were making up sponsored pages mock-ups for the ad reps to sell and if I ever had a spare minute help out on other Tangible Media titles. Oh yeah and I re-designed the website too. Basically when I worked at The Groove Guide, Leonie and I wanted it to become the best magazine in the world so I did a lot of extra stuff to raise it's profile and we were really excited when we started seeing the results through the readership stats."
Do you experience stress in your field of work, and if so, how do you cope with it?
"Yip, sometimes. It really depends on where you are working and how appreciated you are. If you are being shown some love you'll work hard and put in those late hours. I love designing so only really get stressed out if I feel like I am being taken advantage of."
What artist do you draw inspiration from?
"A lot of artists, designers and photographers inspire me. However I'd have to say David Shrigley and Edward Wurm are artists that never fail to make me giggle or look at something from a completely different perspective which is really inspiring."
Aden Miles - Aden is a journalist, writer and artist with a passion for music, food and telling people's stories.
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