When illustration meets homewares – We chat to Celeste Fishburn of Design by Fish

If you’ve visited the Finders Keepers Markets in the last 12 months you may recognise the work of Celeste Fishburn. The Brisbane based graphic designer and illustrator applies her distinctive, bold and playful aesthetic to prints and homewares designed to liven up the home.

Celeste landed upon her passion for graphic design and illustration after spending years working in various other areas of the creative industries, including music and architecture. 18 months ago she took the leap into freelance life, launching her business Design By Fish.

We sat down with Celeste to talk about her background, creative inspiration, the challenges of freelance life and finding her niche at local artisan markets.

Firstly, tell us a bit about your business and what you do.

I’m a Brisbane based illustrator and graphic designer. I run my own business, Design by Fish, which is a freelance graphic design business. I also do custom illustrations and have a brand of printed products that give me a lot of joy. I create illustrations that are inspired by things that inspire me, like music and astrology.

What were you doing before you launched Design by Fish and what made you take that leap into running your own business?

So, I was working in an architecture studio and in that role I was doing a lot of graphic design work, but I had no formalised training in it. I said to my boss “I think I need to actually learn how to do this properly”. So I did a course at Shillington part-time, while I was working full time.

In that time I found I actually love the graphic design side of things. I also rediscovered my love of drawing, which is something that I hadn’t done really since I was at high school. Once I finished the course I asked myself “what am I going to do with that?”. Some friends had encouraged me to keep up the illustration and open up my own Etsy store, so I thought “yeah ok, cool. I’ll open up my own Etsy store!”.

I then finished up working at the architecture studio and said to myself “let’s see if I can give graphic design and illustration as a freelancer a go”. So I’ve been doing that for about 18 months now and just gave it a bit of a go and started letting people know that that’s what I was doing and yeah, it’s just sort of rolled from there.

What have been some of the most challenging things about starting DBF?

You firstly have to take the leap of faith. That takes a bit of guts to do. Sometimes you can hold yourself back and other times you can throw yourself into the deep end, which is kind of what I did [laughs]. And there’s been challenges in that it’s not always constant work. Sometimes you might lose a bit of confidence and then you might build it up again. So yeah, it is a ride. but it’s been a fun ride!

Can you tell us a bit about your creative process and what inspires you?

I always say that music is my number one inspiration, and it really is. A long time ago I worked in the music industry and was able to work with songwriters. I worked in the publishing side of things. Seeing people who were creative everyday and making a living off their art was really inspiring to me. I still have a love of music. Hearing new artists release their work inspires me to give it a go on my side. It’s also a constant companion to me when I’m drawing or designing something.

During my creative process I start with an ink drawing or sketch, and then I bring it into the adobe creative suite, and then I play around with the colours. I just play around with it! I ‘suppose that’s where the graphic design comes in as well as the illustration. And then I get to print them on some really beautiful tea towels or printed items. So that’s it in a nutshell.

What made you want to start printing your designs on tea towels?

I started creating printed products, you know, paper prints and some gift cards and I had a lot of fun with that. Then, having worked in an architecture studio with an interior design lens, I thought “oh, I really would love to make homewares”. Again some friends had encouraged that. So I decided I wanted to make some tea towels that were really fun for the house and would make great gifts.

I’ve always loved making gifts for people and then giving them to them, and I see this as a way to do that in a business sense. I get to create something tactile that is based on my illustrations that I have drawn, digitised and then digitally printed on a beautiful cotton linen tea towel. People buy them as gifts and housewarming presents and then they sit in their kitchen and it’s just something fun and light hearted for the house.

Has creating the printed tea towels benefited your business in any other way?

The printed tea towels have really opened up the opportunity to participate in artisan design markets here in Brisbane. [The markets are] very curated and having a product that can be used in the home that is of an illustrated nature is something that the market curators have responded well to.

The thing that keeps me going [to the markets] is seeing people’s reactions when you’re on stall. People having a giggle if its a light hearted piece or just even chatting to people who are probably very creative themselves. And similarly you meet lots of other stall holders who are running their own small business and that’s a really nice community to be a part of.

And finally, how have you found the process of getting your tea towels produced?

Working with The Print Bar has been quite a straight forward easy process. During the first round of prints we did together, we worked quite closely in terms of “let’s see how the colours come out”. You know, you look at something digitally but you don’t know what it’s going to look like on a tea towel. So we did a number of samples in the first run of tea towels that I did. Now moving forward, because I’ve worked with The Print Bar for over a year now, I now know “ok that’s going to look ok on a tea towel and that’s not”, but we still do a sample and I still get to check it before we go to a print run.

Celeste’s products and more of her work can be found on her website designby.fish. If you’re interested in printing designs on your own homewares you can browse our collection of blank products here.