Daphna is a designer living in Austin, TX, focused on visual design, product design, and illustration. Known as the Queen of Occult, her illustrations draw inspiration from traditional American tattoos, the occult, and mysticism—expect lots of skulls, snakes, and hands. Despite having close to 100K Instagram followers, she experiences some of the same struggles the rest of us do, like the difficulty of building a portfolio and the fear of sharing your work online. Tune in for a talk about leveraging social media, licensing your artwork, and people who use your designs without permission. You can find Daphna's artwork on Instagram, merch on her online store, and more work samples on her website.

Questions for this interview.

• Is Queen of Occult a nickname you embrace?
• Do you ever feel any pressure from being labeled that way by other designers?
• Does the thought of your work being too consistent ever cross your mind?
• How much of your independent work comes from platforms like Instagram and Dribbble?
• What advice do you have for people who want to leverage social media for independent work but are worried their work isn't good enough to share?
• How do you typically move communication with a potential client off social media and start to onboard them?
• Does the response to your work and comments about your work on social media make you more confident as a designer?
• How do you maintain such a high level of output for your artwork?
• Does the style of your independent work ever creep into your designs at your full-time job?
• Can you explain what a Tattoo Pass is and tell us the story behind it?
• Do people steal your work often? How does it make you feel when that happens?
• Do you have any advice for someone who might find themselves in a similar situation?
• How do you handle ownership of the artwork you create? Do you license the artwork for specific uses and a limited time, or do you transfer all ownership rights to the client?
• What are some of the things that made you weird as a kid?
• If you had to give up one thing from your illustrations, would it be snakes, skulls, or hands?
• Do you know the name of the typeface used on your portfolio website?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at [email protected].

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

studentsofdesign.simplecast.com