Katie Johnson ('13) knows her style as an artist.

She believes in attention to detail. She enjoys copywriting and playing with letters.

And she has an affinity for Art Nouveau, which she discovered at UNT during a design history course with Professor Michael Gibson.

"I literally remember where I was when he got to the Art Nouveau section," she says. "It was one of those moments where you're sitting, and the heavens open up, and the camera zooms in on you. I was like, 'What is this amazing art period that I've never heard of in my life?' It's like sinuous curves, and asymmetry, and sometimes symmetry, and the way that they flatten shapes and color, and all the ornamentation and florals. It's just beautiful, and so a lot of that comes out in my art as well."

Now, Johnson, who co-runs Goodtype design studio in Austin, wants other artists to find their style of art. She's co-written Follow Your Art: Uncover and Unleash Your Creative Voice with fellow artist Ilana Griffo, a workbook for creatives published by Abrams this spring.

Finding Her Style

Johnson has always been creative. But through much of her childhood, she was focused on music. A singer, she often attended jazz camps at UNT and knew she would attend UNT and major in jazz vocals.

Then, as a high school senior in Austin, she got an assignment in a photojournalism class to design an album cover using a photograph and graphic elements.

"That's when I turned to my teacher, and I was like, 'What is this that I'm doing? Because I'm obsessed.' We were just supposed to do the album cover, but I came after school every day and did the whole insert."

When she enrolled at UNT, she pivoted to communication design, and her path as a visual artist was set.

Eric Ligon, now retired professor of communication design, was a huge influence, even when the critiques were rough.

"I felt a lot of emotions, good and bad, but it taught me a lot. It's really thickened my skin, in a good way, for sharing my work and being less afraid, because the worst had already happened. I was like, 'You know what, I can handle anything.'"

'A Snowball of Goodness'

After graduation, Johnson returned to her hometown of Austin and worked for four years as an art director at a small advertising agency. She then started her own business, making stationery and art prints to sell at craft fairs.

But she realized she couldn't find much information about how to run an art business. She teamed up with Griffo, a fellow artist and the book's co-author, to fill that gap.

A few years later, they got the opportunity to take over an existing business called Goodtype, which began as a hugely popular Instagram account devoted to typography. Under their leadership, Goodtype serves as a studio to create type and lettering-based designs, as well as supporting business education for artists.

A book seemed like a natural next step. 

"Anytime that we do workshops, classes, or just talking to our peers, the same question kept coming up, and that was, 'How do I find my style as an artist?'" Johnson says.

The workbook asks its reader questions to uncover their choices, motivations and certain throughlines that come up through their personality and artwork.

"It really helps you decode those things first," she says. "The second part of the book is how to make that story clear so that other people understand it, too."

Johnson expresses creativity in other ways. She will often write and sing songs, and her husband -- Jared Farney ('14 M.M.), a drummer and a sound designer for video games she met at Lucky Lou's -- produces the tracks.

She's happy with the success of the book, especially when she's hosting book signings.

"I kept having dreams that nobody was going to show up and it was going to be so embarrassing. But the community really showed out, and I definitely wasn't sitting there by myself. Since then, it's just been a snowball of goodness."