Sarah Kempa on the power of routine and sharing your work
Creatives in Tech Interview Series, Issue #3
This week, as part of my interview series on creatives in tech, I talk to Sarah Kempa, Design Manager at Audible, cartoonist behind the popular Instagram account @auntsarahdraws, and author of the forthcoming book “Where Did My Roommate Put My Charger? A Kind of Activity Book for Kind of Adults.” This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Sarah Kempa on the power of routine and sharing your work
You’re an illustrator, cartoonist, and soon-to-be-author. You also have a degree in Engineering and a full time job in design. How would you describe your journey to this moment?
When I was in my early twenties, I studied engineering and worked as a data analyst at a tech company. I became interested in UX Design— it seemed to fit my curiosity of, what are people doing? Why are they doing that? How can we make things easier? For the longest time, breaking into UX and growing in that career was the goal. I was trying to do research, read books, figure out how to get into the field, go to workshops.
And then a few years back, after making it into UX, I started trying to do more cartooning. When you're switching careers, you have less time outside of work because it's more mentally draining at work when you're trying to learn new skills. I had always loved to draw, but I was finally comfortable enough with my career that I was exploring hobbies again. I was trying to figure out what my process could be and how I could improve. Even though I've had some success [as a cartoonist], I’ve had enough rejection and disappointment where I'm insecure about some things and a lot more thoughtful in how I can improve. It’s almost like being back in that early career state where I was in my UX career years ago.
When did you first turn to illustration and cartooning?
I have been cartooning for the longest time. I grew up loving the Peanuts cartoon, and Cathy, the syndicated newspaper comics we’d read daily, and on the weekends in color. All cartoons were three panels at the most in newspapers at the time — they were really simple. So if you wanted to try and draw a cartoon, you would first draw in pencil, and then marker, and then color it in with a crayon. And that's like the whole day as a kid. I was making little cartoon books in kindergarten.
I remember trying to interject that personality in school projects in grade school. In sixth grade, there was a science fair and I was doing a paper airplane test. I had all these cartoon characters, and drew myself drawing the person throwing the paper airplanes. And I remember getting feedback from my peers saying, “It’s kind of distracting to see this drawing.” [Laughs.] I was so discouraged, but now I think it's funny to reflect on that. I've always gravitated away from writing anything long— I was a bad speller and self-conscious about my writing— so having an image to support a very simple word was always really interesting.
How did that childhood hobby become a creative pursuit in your adulthood?
In college and when I first graduated, I was cartooning less. And then I was in jury duty a few years ago, maybe in 2017, and you just have all that time. I was in a different job and I thought, Okay, I'm not supposed to work during jury duty, legally. So I don't need to check emails. I'm just going to sit here and draw and try and get back into that. I haven't stopped since then.
Was that a conscious decision, or more of a whim to return to cartooning?
It was a natural inflection point. I had wanted to be a UX Designer and set out to achieve that goal and finally did, and had been doing it for a few years. Then you realize not everything is what you thought it would be in your dream career. I think I probably needed a break and it was an easy way to take a break because you were forced into it. I also think there were just a lot more things that I was interested in saying or finding ways to say— 2017 was an openly chaotic time. I was trying to find a way to get some of this out.
You launched your now popular Instagram account, @auntsarahdraws that same year. What made you want to go public with your work?
My initial goal was to improve my cartoons. There were a lot of people sharing cartoons on Instagram, so it seemed like a good way to put something out there and get feedback on it. I know so many other cartoonists who submit [art] to The New Yorker, and you just submit, and submit, and submit, and you don't necessarily hear anything. You don't know how it's going, if it's hitting anything, or what's going on. But a good way to know that is sharing it with people who will respond to it or maybe respond. [Instagram] was a good place to put cartoons and drawings and has grown since then. Now I've had things in the New Yorker, but I still haven't had a cartoon, and that's still a goal of mine.
How does that engagement inform your work and creative process?
It is great because you're getting instant feedback, but like anything there's a balance. It's nice to be able to share things and have people relate, especially when things are still unfolding, like the recent coup attempt, and you know that's going to be our day, we're going to be following this news. Sometimes you don't know how to vocalize something or express how you're feeling and you see it expressed elsewhere, and that has always been really relatable for me, so I hope for other people that's similar.
I try not to get too driven by people's feedback though, because it can be really stressful. It's easy to get caught up in looking at things that people respond to and don't respond to. It's discouraging the first time you share something that's personal and nobody responds to it. I try to intentionally avoid thinking about it.
Where do your ideas come from?
Every morning I try to wake up before the work day and write a list of things that I'm feeling. I take 10 minutes to read the news and [the list] may be a reflection of that. What happened yesterday? Or what's happening today with all this impeachment stuff? What do I need to be aware of? Maybe selfishly, I want to make sure that I'm personally processing how I feel and understanding that. I want to see what is going on in the world and what reactions I am getting out of it. Some of it is also just a personal feeling. For example, during this ongoing pandemic, it's easy to feel disconnected from people who are friends and not know where you stand with them because you're seeing people less and you're kind of misinterpreting communication. So just capturing all of those thoughts that I have and feelings or questions. Then I'll try to see if there's a cartoon I can draw out of that. And then I might try and submit that as a daily cartoon to the New Yorker, or if there's something longer that I feel like writing, I'll let myself write a little bit. And that's really where most of my ideas come from — just spending five minutes (I set a timer) and working on that. It’s a simple thing to do every morning, where I have something to lead the way.
That sounds like a very productive daily practice.
What I like about it is that I can feel like I have nothing to say, or like I don't know how to express myself, or like I don't want to do anything, and it helps me to just think about what is on my mind. And maybe I have a cartoon I share. I try not to put too much pressure on myself other than doing that. If you just do something for a few minutes, then at least I did that.
Is there a throughline between your design work and cartooning, or do they feel separate and distinct to you?
Where they're both really similar is the process I go through for ideating. The creative process I have developed [for design] is almost identical [to the cartooning process], where I'll start a list of design ideas, I'll do sketches, I'll do iterations, I'll share things to get feedback. I'll change it and do it again and develop it. And that's the same thing that I do in cartooning— you write some things, you'll do sketches, you'll do different exercises and just draw what you can for five minutes and then draw another thing based on that. So that is very similar. Another overlap is that when I'm writing cartoons or comics, I try to think of how I can use the least amount of words to show something and use images to support that, which is similar to creating story maps and user flows in my design work.
You are both Aunt Sarah the cartoonist and Sarah who works at Audible. How do these different sides of you — these personas, really — relate to each other? Do they?
I was thinking yesterday about how I don't do a lot of cartoons about the workplace or the tech world. I hadn’t intentionally avoided it, I just haven't really drawn [about it]. And that's interesting because I always try and draw on things I have a lot of knowledge on or feel confident in thinking through. But maybe I’ve subconsciously kept that separate.
I was reflecting on whether I had an interest in doing something like that personally. Like Sarah Cooper— she was a UX designer previously, and so much of her initial work and jokes with commentary are on design in the workplace. And it's like, fantastic. It's so funny. I just never even thought of drawing workplace things, maybe because I'm trying to keep them separate, and I like having them separate, which I think is fine. Maybe that will change someday. I do enjoy my job and I like where I work and the people I work with, the structure I work with— I find it exciting. But I also like having this somewhat separate group of cartoonists and people to lean on.
As your creative work starts to take off and grow, do you ever think about going all in?
Right now, I haven't thought too much about it. I'm so fortunate to be in a full-time role where it's relatively stopgapped, from nine to five ish. When I was growing up and in college, everyone was like, nine to fivers, you didn't want to be one. But it's perfect. I wake up in the morning, do my creative stuff for two hours, I’ll work, and then I have the evening to finish up on things and cook or do more relaxing non-work things. I wonder if that's also why I keep [cartooning and work] so distinct — because I have very distinct timing for them, almost like shifts. The balance is working well.
In terms of its impact on my professional career, when I did try to do more creative cartooning [at work], I wasn't sure if I liked doing it or not, or if it took away from my cartooning [at home]. It was so fun to do creative stuff during the workday, but I also felt exhausted. There’s a balance of, where do you use that [creative] energy? If you're managing that at work, then you don’t have as much creative power for your day, for some of your other side activities or interests.
You just sold your first book, Where Did My Roommate Put My Charger? A Kind of Activity Book for Kind of Adults. Mazel tov! Tell me about your book and why you wanted to take on this project.
I had initially started pitching last year, in February, before the pandemic happened. I was thinking about things I loved doing as a kid, and all the activity books— like Highlights magazine, fold-up books, or even look-under activities — and I wanted to make a similar version, but for adults. So the pitch is that it's “a kind of activity for kind of adults.”
For example, there's going to be a lot of “seek and find” activities. I'll have different illustrated scenes— maybe the farmer's market, a 30 something year-old’s apartment fridge, or some Zodiac scenes— and some humor cues of things that are happening in the scene or that you're looking for. Hopefully it will be fun and engaging for people, entertaining. I’m trying to interject things to keep it current, keep it fun, and light hearted during this ginormous pandemic. It should be something you don't have to read through all at once.
What was the book proposal process like for you?
I learned so much during that. In 2018 I worked with the editors of The Bella Donna, a humor publication online. The editors had a deal for a book called New Erotica for Feminists, which was a satire that came out of a piece that was in McSweeney's. I had met them then and done some illustrations for the chapter headings. And through that, I kept in touch with one of the editors, Caitlin Kunkel, who shared a lot of resources with me: how their pitch was, what it looks like, things that they had worked on, which was so helpful because I had felt like, what do I do? What am I supposed to be capturing? Just seeing a format and seeing somebody explain who they were, why they're doing this, what it is, and having a higher level outline helped me structure the outline that I had started to create. That was probably the most helpful thing to have. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to do it, but sometimes you just need one thing to take and change, to mimic and make yours.
What advice do you have for other creatives in tech who are balancing side projects with their 9-5’s and investing in creative pursuits on top of work responsibilities?
What's been most helpful for me is to carve out time— either the same time every day or the same amount of time per day— and just allow yourself to do that creative practice that you're trying to do. Even if you feel like you are bad at it. The biggest thing is giving yourself time, consistently. That’s the biggest way I've improved and also the biggest way that I've found ideas that I've wanted to share or submit. I still have so much that I'm trying to improve and learn, and I'm sure it shows in my work, but it's good to always be learning and give yourself the opportunity to improve.