For many working creatives, the path to a viable design career feels like a high-stakes blueprint.
But for independent illustrator, Top Skillshare teacher, and author Chris Piascik, working with clients like Nike, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network wasn’t the result of a master plan—it was a series of happy accidents fueled by a 14-year daily drawing habit.
In the latest episode of the Design Icons podcast, Chris shares how he transitioned from a corporate design job to becoming a world-renowned illustrator by leaning into his style and focusing on passion projects.
You can hear the full interview on the Design Icons Podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
Key Points Covered in Our Interview with Chris Piascik, Professional Illustrator, Top Skillshare teacher, and author of The Accidental Illustrator
Stumbling Upon Design: Growing up in a household where both parents worked for the post office, Chris didn’t realize “artist” was a viable career path until he discovered the intricate lettering and designs on vintage album covers from bands like The Beatles and Chicago. However, his journey almost ended in high school. During a still-life assignment, Chris realized he couldn’t draw a realistic apple as well as his peers. “I was like, if I can’t even draw the most realistic apple in my small-town high school, I’m absolutely not going to make it,” he recalls. It was a teacher who helped him course correct, pointing out that his sense of humor and natural style were far more valuable than the ability to perfectly render fruit.
Tricking Yourself into Consistency: The cornerstone of Chris’s success is his 14-year-long public daily drawing project. Originally started as a way to trick himself back into a creative routine after realizing he had stopped drawing at his corporate design job, the project became his ultimate portfolio. When the 2008 recession hit and Chris was laid off, he realized he already had two years of daily work online that was beginning to attract freelance clients. This consistency allowed his brand to grow organically without the pressure of “strategic” branding.
Leaning Into the Weird: One of the biggest lessons Chris shares is that what feels “wrong” or niche is often what gets you hired. He tells the story of creating chaotic, “weird” repeating patterns that he feared had no market value. “I was like, ‘This is not—there’s no market for this. This is ridiculous. I should not be posting these,'” Chris says. Instead, an art director at Nickelodeon saw those exact patterns and hired him to create a variety of deliverables including wallpapers and art for their headquarters. By leaning into his DIY punk and skate culture roots, he attracted his dream clients by simply being himself. Trust your instincts – many opportunities in your career come from doing what feels natural, even when it seemsnon-strategic at the time.
Story Over Technique: Chris advocates for doubling down on humanity, story, and meaning — especially now. He believes that while technology can render realistic images, it cannot replicate the unique story, memory, or personality a human designer brings to the page. Chris sees a “punk rock” opportunity in the current market: a resurgence of hand-drawn art, zines, and analog methods as a rebellion against generic digital perfection.
Make a lot of work: Chris feels like his career has partly been built through sheer volume and repetition, not waiting for perfect ideas.
You can also find Chris’s new book, The Accidental Illustrator, which documents his 14-year daily drawing journey through case studies, interviews, and over a decade of quirky, bold artwork.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Design Icons?
Design Icons is a podcast from Noun Project featuring conversations with leading designers, illustrators, creative directors, artists, and other creative professionals. Each episode explores a guest’s career, creative process, challenges, and lessons learned, with practical insights and career advice for people working in the creative industry.
Who is Chris Piascik?
Chris Piascik is an independent illustrator, designer, author, and Skillshare teacher known for his playful, humorous illustration style and 14-year-long public daily drawing project. After beginning his career as a graphic designer and working with award winning agencies, he transitioned into full-time freelance illustration, eventually working with major brands including Nike, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and McDonald’s.
What was Chris Piascik’s 14-year daily drawing project about?
Chris Piascik started his daily drawing project in 2007 with a simple goal: draw more. He committed to making a drawing everyday and sharing it online, ultimately maintaining the practice for 14 years. What began as a personal creative exercise became a defining part of his illustration career, helping him develop his distinctive style, build an audience, and attract professional illustration work from dream clients.
What is Noun Project?
Noun Project is the world’s most trusted source for art-quality icons, made by humans. Founded in 2010, Noun Project offers 10 million free vector icons alongside art-quality stock photography for use in presentations, websites, apps, graphic design, education, and other creative projects.
Full Episode Transcript
Nick: Welcome to the Design Icons podcast, where we talk to creative leaders about work, life, and beyond. Design Icons is brought to you by Noun Project, the world’s most trusted source for art-quality icons, made by humans. Today, I’m sitting down with Chris Piascik, the illustrator best known for his 14-year long public daily drawing project. Chris’s style is rooted in punk rock, bold pop art, and a childhood obsession with vintage album covers. Through posting his work online for over a decade, his quirky illustrations caught the eye of major clients like Nike, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network. His work has been featured on everything from McDonald’s bags to Facebook sticker sets. Chris is a top teacher on Skillshare, a widely recognized YouTube creator with almost 150,000 subscribers, and the author of a new book called The Accidental Illustrator. In this interview, we cover Chris’s journey to becoming a successful independent designer, how he attracted big clients through consistent work on passion projects, and why your story is more important than your technique in the age of AI.
Nick: Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. Really excited to get to know you better.
Chris: Oh, my pleasure. Happy to be here.
Nick: For listeners who are just learning about you today, what are you focused on these days and what are some of the key moments that got you here?
Chris: So, I am an illustrator and I never planned to be an illustrator. It didn’t even occur to me to be an option. When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with drawing and that was like my favorite thing to do. And at one point, I started looking at the album packages around the house, like records and CDs, and got really interested in that and started making my own when I was really pretty young. Then someone, maybe it was my uncle, was like, “Oh, you’ll be a graphic artist one day.” It kind of blew my mind; I couldn’t even wrap my head around the idea that that was like a job cuz both my parents worked at the post office. In a career day at school, it seemed like every option was just miserable to me. I was dead set on that from there on out. So I went to school for design and got a job as a designer and I thought that was my dream job. But at some point early on in my career I realized I wasn’t drawing anymore; I was just doing sketches for design comps and that kind of freaked me out. Drawing was such a big part of my identity. I couldn’t just decide to draw more; I’ve never been good at following through with anything unless I trick myself into it. So, I decided I was going to do this daily drawing challenge where I would just make something, anything, and post it online every day. Posting it online was the crucial thing because I needed something to hold myself accountable. After about a year, I started getting random freelance work based on those drawings. After about two years we got into the great recession, the economy completely collapsed, the studio I worked for lost one of its biggest clients and I got laid off. But I was two years into the daily drawing project and getting somewhat regular work, so I decided to go all in. I’ve been an independent illustrator for about 16 years now and it was sort of all an accident I guess.
Nick: I have two follow-ups that I need to know based on my own personal interest. One is, were there any album covers that really influenced you?
Chris: Sure. I’ll start with the really early ones that were just in my house. One of them was a Chicago record and the band logo was in a thumb print. It’s lettering but also a thumb print and I just liked the idea of the lettering also being the thumb print was crazy. And then I would say the Beatles’ Sergeant Peppers. It doesn’t even really have illustration, but there’s so much weird stuff on it. And then there was a Beach Boys album that I just really liked the lettering on. From an early age, I was really drawn to cool type.
Nick: That’s beautiful. And the second question I had for you is I saw that you were really into rollerblading and your work kind of gives me a very radical skate blading culture vibe sometimes. I’m curious, was there any influence there?
Chris: Yeah, I was always drawn to that sort of DIY punk aesthetic. I started rollerblading at the very, very beginning when it was just a new thing and I’ve stuck with it. Early on it was obviously very much influenced by skateboarding culture. But I was also into BMX for a long time and that sort of culture too. So all that punk influence, skate culture, and BMX stuff was always a huge inspiration, and that mixed with 80s and 90s cartoons really informs my aesthetic.
Nick: Love it. You’ve built a career around work that’s playful, weird, and funny. Was there ever pressure from clients, the industry, or even yourself to be more serious?
Chris: I would say the pressure came from myself, specifically when I got laid off and was trying to decide if I was going to try to make it work as an illustrator. I was looking around seeing what other illustrators that seemed successful were doing and trying to fit that mold. But that kind of stuff was always the stuff that did not hit. I feel like everything that’s gone well for me has resulted from me just leaning into what I do and embracing my weird interests.
Nick: That’s awesome. And you mentioned the Daily Drawing Project. Was building that personal brand intentional?
Chris: I think the daily drawing project really allowed me to do that work without actually thinking about it. The idea of me trying to build a brand and an aesthetic would be too overwhelming and I would overthink it. Making this huge pile of work allowed it to slowly happen organically over time. I didn’t plan it to happen that way; it was just to trick myself into a routine of drawing.
Nick: And the consistency I think is such an interesting thing. Did you ever have days where you put something out and it was more for just checking the box than loving what you put out?
Chris: Yeah, 100%. I’ve always been my hardest critic. The daily drawing project made that easier though because I always knew that I was going to post something tomorrow. I could be like, “All right, this is rough, but I’m sick or I didn’t have enough time.” The idea that I’m definitely going to be making something tomorrow took the pressure off of doing something good today.
Nick: Yeah, definitely. I see on your resume, you’ve done work for some really big brands—Nike, Adidas, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, McDonald’s, Facebook. Aside from being enormously talented, did anything particular open those doors?
Chris: Pretty much everything is directly tied to the daily drawings. Let me talk about Nickelodeon in particular. The way I ended up working with them is because in my daily drawing project, I was always trying to come up with themes. I’ve always loved to draw lots of little things and fill a space. When I was a little kid, I was overwhelmed by the blank page, so I would always just start drawing something small and then just make something next to it until I filled the whole page. Later on I learned how to make a repeating pattern and it was so satisfying. I just started making so many patterns. At the beginning I was like, “This is probably not good for my career because there’s no market for this; none of the patterns at fabric stores look like this.” But I was having fun and I kept making them. It turns out an art director at Nickelodeon found these patterns and they were like, “We need all these patterns for activity books, wallpaper, and furniture in our headquarters. We want a way to incorporate all the different shows and this is a perfect way to illustrate our characters in your own style.” The fact that my patterns look different was not something that was wrong; it was unique. Everything is an accident for me.
Nick: I love it. I think there’s a kernel of trusting your instinct because it felt good to you to make those.
Chris: If I was trying to form a plan to work with my dream clients, I would never get there. I’ve started to try to trust my instinct on that, but it’s still hard because I feel like anything that’s ever happened I didn’t see it coming.
Nick: Well, you’ve taught a lot of people how to be more creative through your classes, content, and book. Has teaching been strategic or is it just something you love doing?
Chris: The first time I taught was very early on, only about a year after I graduated art school. I taught as an adjunct for quite a while. Now I’m in a perfect situation where I teach one class in a master fine art program and it’s just one week in the summer. I enjoyed the online classes in Skillshare more because I could just put out videos. YouTube was also a complete accident; when I started the channel, I was just doing it to push my Skillshare classes when my kid was born and I had to work in a specific amount of time. The YouTube channel unexpectedly got a lot of traction. I enjoy it but I don’t think of myself so much as a teacher.
Nick: I think clearly there’s something there if folks are there to learn and they’re excited about it.
Chris: I don’t think I’m doing anything special, but I’ve gotten so much positive feedback. I think I just feel like I’m having a conversation or hanging out and showing some things. The fact that I don’t think of it so specifically as teaching maybe is what helps it resonate.
Nick: Totally. I think you’re good at making things fun and lighter. Learning is much easier when you’re laughing or having fun.
Chris: Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Nick: On the note of teaching, is there like a message or a mindset that you think is completely wrong or is there anything that you feel creatives should be doubling down on?
Chris: What’s really important, especially now with AI, is the story and putting yourself in the work—embracing that humanity. I see a lot of illustration students who are amazing at hyper realistic drawing, and it’s a little concerning because that’s the exact kind of thing that AI can do. Focus on how you’re making something that communicates a feeling or an idea and leaning into what makes you a person.
Nick: Being able to tell a story and bring that unique thumbprint to it has worked really well for you.
Chris: Yeah, and I don’t even necessarily mean actually telling a story, but is it from a memory that you had that’s unique to you?
Nick: Has there ever been a time where you felt like your path just wasn’t going to work out at all?
Chris: That almost got derailed in high school. I was in art class and we had a still life assignment. I was drawing the apple and I remember looking over at my two friends and noticing their apples were way better than mine. I was like, if I can’t even draw the most realistic apple in my small town high school, I’m absolutely not going to make it. I was telling my art teacher I was going to drop the class and thankfully she told me that was crazy. She said being able to perfectly render an apple is not what’s important as an artist. She showed me some of my art and said my sense of humor and doing things naturally was way more important. It was probably the best advice I could have gotten.
Nick: I love to hear that a teacher gave you that nugget because you’re a teacher yourself. What’s giving you hope right now?
Chris: I think the amount of backlash to all this “AI slop” is hopeful. It’s also led to this resurgence of people making stuff by hand; there’s been a big zine resurgence. I think it could be like punk rock time where we’re rebelling against this other stuff and going hard in the other direction.
Nick: Yes, I have seen the zines, too. I actually started teaching myself how to sew and traditional tattoo art because I need to reconnect to my hands.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely.
Nick: Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Can you give us a quick shout about the book?
Chris: There’s a Kickstarter for my new book, The Accidental Illustrator. It documents my 14 plus year daily drawing project—a ton of work, drawings, the story along the way, case studies, and some interviews. I’m really excited about it.
Nick: Awesome. Thank you so much for the time.
Chris: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much.
