Today we’d like to introduce you to Valencia Bowie.
Hi Valencia, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Well, let’s take it back to the pandemic when Covid hit. I was a server at Texas roadhouse, I always wanted to start a business, but I couldn’t fund it when we couldn’t work, and unemployment was an option, I took that money I made weekly and started my first business The Honey Hills Collection. The collection included lashes, keychains, charm bracelets, custom socks, and clothing. I use to take my boxes to work when we were allowed to go back, and I use to sell them to my coworkers and the tables I served. I did this from august 2020 – April 2021.
In June 2021 my car had recently gave out on me and I was very frustrated because I had just paid it off a few months ago it was my first car from college so I downloaded this app. I don’t know where I got the idea from but I just started to make collages of people. I was making collages of myself and of my friends my friends posted my work and a lot of people started to inbox me and asked me, could I make them a collage? So I was doing collages for free because I just needed to put that frustration somewhere and take my mind off of me not having any transportation at the moment. Once I started doing so, many collages per day someone inbox me, who I made a collage for and said that I needed to charge for making my collage even if it’s nothing but five dollars. So I started making collages I was charging five dollars depending if they got more, I was charging $12 nothing expensive because I was a beginner and I didn’t mean for it to turn into a hobby or a side hustle. It was just something that I was doing which was creating and I’ve have always been a creative person. Soon after that the people that were buying collages from me were asking me to make things as far as flyers and business cards and logos invitations and that’s when I started to step into the graphic design world.
December 2021 came and one of my clients asked me to make a booking website for her. The booking platform that my client use a lot of people that offer services use this certain platform and I accepted the job even though I didn’t really know how to do the job because I’m self-taught with everything and I knew that I could possibly teach myself. So I went on Instagram to other graphic designer pages I didn’t see how to create it I watched YouTube tutorials and still couldn’t learn how to create it. I inboxed someone for help and I really didn’t get the answer I was looking for, so I decided to just start playing with dimensions myself, because I can design all day but you need the correct dimensions. I ended up getting it right after a few days of trials and trying to figure out how upload this layout, my client Addie J, posted that I did her Booking website a lot of people started to hit me up and asked me can I create their booking website. Addie told me my prices were way too low and I needed to charge my worth and I was scared because I was like who’s going to pay me $100 for a website that’s crazy, she told me it would bring the right kind of clientele. I started charging $100 and people paid it with no problem, before that I was charging $40-50, my booking websites today are $180.
at this time I was a server at outback and I was trying to balance serving, my part-time job, and also doing graphic design it got to a point where I was very worn out and tired and I wasn’t able to really put my all into my graphic design work because I was working my main serving job and also my part-time job so January 2022 I decided to quit my job and become a full-time graphic designer and once I became a full-time graphic designer I noticed that my creativity expanded I was not only just doing booking websites flyers logos business cards I also jumped into e-commerce and started designing Shopify in Wix websites I started to create content for my clients for Instagram and became a social media manager if they did not have time to post the content they created so here I am October 2022, 2 months away from my one year anniversary of being a full-time, self-taught, black-owned entrepreneur, graphic designer, and content creator.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has definitely not been easy but it is appreciated some of the struggles that I had to deal with along the way is balancing personal life and business life learning that I can’t really let my personal life affect or interfere with my business life also some of the struggles that I have dealt with is believing in myself sometimes when I look at other graphic designers work and things that they post I feel like they are so creative , so out of the box , so different , that sometimes I can easily get discouraged and feel like my work doesn’t look as good as theirs but I have to sit back and think like I am a dope graphic designer and there are a lot of graphic designers that I looked up to before I even got in the graphic designing industry who reach out to me now and ask me for tips and how do I do certain things or they tell me that they look up to me and that they love my work and these are people that I looked up to with it I consider me a goat in the graphic designing world , I believe we’re all really good at what we do in our own way ! another struggle that I think that I have dealt with is not having a firm policy or business hour or contact number when I first started you know when you first start your business you’re just getting out there you really don’t know what all you need or how to do it you just do it lol, so I definitely struggled with that in the beginning because I was getting hit up on my personal number I was getting hit up on Facebook I didn’t have you set business hours so I was talking to people late at night and that could become a struggle because when you start allowing that to happen you can’t get mad when people are asking can they talk to you at 8 o’clock at night and things like that so I had to create business hours I had to create a business number for them to reach me on I had to create those boundaries so that I can still function properly throughout the day because if I can’t take care of myself and function then I’m not able to do the job that I need to do for my clients
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Pretty Creative Things?
So first let’s talk about the name Emma Stone because that’s my name on Facebook if you click the tab under the people category, so when I was working for a particular job that used to drive me crazy I used to make funny post about that job but I didn’t want them to be able to look at my profile on Facebook and so I decided to put up a fake name on Facebook Scarlett Johansson wasn’t available because Facebook said that I had to upload my ID since the system recognize it there is an actress so I went with one of my second favorite actresses which is Emma Stone so I came up with that name on Facebook and when I started doing graphic design people started to call me Emma people think that my real name is Emma but my real name is Valencia Emma is just a name that is for social media that I need to change because that somebody else name lol I just didn’t expect for the name to take off the way that it did like it’s crazy I feel like a lot of my success happened overnight
So what do I want for you to know about my business, well I am a self-taught graphic designer the design websites and more and I do anything that has to do with cresting graphics I am a social media manager, I help people run their Instagram accounts and post content for them, I am a content creator I specialize in reels and transitions .
What sets me apart from others that’s a really good question I think what sets me apart from others is my drive and my creativity I know a lot of female hustlers you know they have ambition and the drive but when you know that you’re l built different, when you know that you’re really raw , and you stand out from others like nobody can tell you any different, that’s just the feeling that I have about myself. What sets me apart from a lot of graphic designers especially in my state is that I offer different services I’m not just doing the website and the logos I’m also printing materials I also help clients with packaging I help my client strategize and get ready for campaigns, I show up to their events and shoots, I do a lot of stuff behind the scenes that makes a lot of brands that you see on social media. IM traveling to my clients I travel to Atlanta I travel to Birmingham I travel to Mobile I am there for my clients when they need me, another thing that says me apart from other designers is anything that anything I do or create is to get my target audiences attention and get them talking saying who is this girl with where is she from where did where did she come from where has she been all my life
What am I most proud of brand wise I feel like I am most proud of a lot of good things have been happening for me within these last couple of months which is why it really took me a minute to do this interview because I have a lot going on and as far as for my business I recently just got the opportunity to be on not one but two radio stations for my own commercial here in Montgomery Alabama I have two billboard designs up for my clients one located in Eastchase in Montgomery in the other one is located in Birmingham Alabama I designed those billboards for my client so to actually see my work come to life like that on a billboard was just amazing words can’t explain how that made me feel and another one of my biggest accomplishments and what I am proud of is that I recently designed a logo for a restaurant that is about to open in Mobile Alabama black owned and they just sent me pictures of the inside the interior where my logo is the wall , the bar , the front of the building with the store hours , my logo on the front of the building. they asked me to be there for the grand opening so to just actually see that my work is coming to life in different cities the feeling is unexplainable
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I am a big and firm believer of networking man networking is the way to go you don’t know who knows who you don’t know who will be at what event you just never know. What has always stuck with me is a line from the movie ATL when John Garrett said it’s not about what you know but who you know and I always knew that when I started that I was a great graphic designer and I knew a lot about branding and designing but when I started to work with certain people and to go to certain events and got to know new people the people that I got to know definitely open doors up for me and put me in contact with other people that helped me elevate even more and of course in return me being able to offer them my services on how to elevate their brand
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @_prettycreativethings
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valencia.bowie.9
Image Credits
Darrionta Jackson
Brandi Colloway
