14. Communities by Design, with Rachel Elnar

Rachel tells us about her love for exchanging design knowledge, her mission to put a stop to shitty typography and why creative communities make her happy.

Show Notes

Rachel Elnar is co-founder and partner of Ramp Creative, co-founder and producer at TypeEd, and teacher at Cal State University. (We already heard about her a few weeks ago, remember? She makes her partner, Michael Stinson, happy.)

What makes Rachel happy? Creative communities. Years ago, while teaching at California State Polytechnic University, she realized she really enjoyed speaking with her students and having them in class. What Rachel enjoyed the most however was the social interaction of watching them grow and learn something new. This was so much fun to her that she and a friend started Designers and Drinks—get togethers during the summer to connect with other Cal Poly Alumni and some students. After 10 years she realized this wasn’t serving too much of a purpose as far as design was concerned. and that’s when she decided to get involved in AIGA (Check it out!).

The ability to share her interests and the love that she has for design with others is what makes Rachel happy about creative communities. She gets to share the struggles and successes of the field—a true exchange of ideas and practices. And although non-creatives are a part of her community, the ties to them are not as tight because that exchange is not present.

Rachel didn’t attend a dedicated art school, so she didn’t get a sense of a creative community then—making her desire to be a part of creative communities even greater. She doesn’t know if if she would still have built communities just for the sake of building them had she attended an art.

Originally, Rachel wanted to be a professor so she could teach for two days, go home, paint and call it a day, but now Rachel feels people inspire her—they make her feel energized and provide mentorship. In fact, she recently started a Meetup Group for her days of—which aren’t really days off—called L.A. Is Just My Type, a type enthusiast group.

All her groups make her happy but Type Ed is special because it’s full of people that want to be better at their craft. Rachel tells us there is a world full of awful typography. Instead of taking on all of these clients individually and fixing their type crime themselves, Rachel and her partner Michael teach their students who are already doing this to be a little more sensitive to their craft and get appropriate feedback to grow.

She’s built and helped build many designer communities, including an AIGA Facebook group she got a LOT of flack for because this was before the organization had an online presence. Does she feel like she’s inspired others by having done this? Maybe. But the reasoning behind their creation remains the same—building a community she didn’t feel she was a part of initially and giving her students the opportunity to learn what good design actually is through her best practices.

Rachel feels very passionately about providing people a space where they can think. She tells us how much work is simply put up and out there without having gone through any type of filter. People wait for someone to look at their work and tell them what to change instead of being critical about it on their own. And while putting yourself out there in this way isn’t good or bad, the fact remains that the most talented people will always rise to the top.

Other things that make her happy? Michael, her partner, typewriters—because it was the first time she got to make art with an instrument other than her own two hands—and teaching Type Ed classes. Her happy food? Champagne.

Connect with Rachel on her website or on Twitter, where she is most active!