Interview with Jayme Montoya of Lucid Graphic Design and Photography

Today you all get to enjoy reading my interview with Jayme Montoya of Lucid Graphic Design and Photography. She is an extremely talented graphic Designer and portrait photographer in Idaho.

Tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m a graphic designer & portrait photographer. I live in Idaho with my husband of 5 years and 3 year old daughter.

Where is your home?
The Treasure Valley of Idaho

If you could build your dream home anywhere, where would it be?
I actually wouldn’t build it, instead I would buy one of those gorgeous colonial style mansions in the south. I picture it having a long, huge tree lined driveway, a whole side of the house with French doors that open up onto a wrap around porch…ahhh.

Do you twitter?
Of course my lovely tweeps, of course!

How about facebook?
That too!

What blog’s do you follow?
Too many. Various design, photography & baking blogs. My google reader has somewhere around 900+ posts I need to catch up on.

What kind of books do you enjoy reading?
I like chick lit, horror and things like what Anne Rice would write.

What are your hobbies?
I ride dirt bikes, paint & bake/decorate cookies/cakes.

Recent baking project for Natalie’s 3rd b-day:

What are your greatest accomplishments?
I would probably say one thing I’m most proud of is having the guts to stand up in front of 250+ people at the American Heart Associations Go Red For Women luncheon and speak about living & surviving a serious heart condition.

Tell us more about your Design work, How did you break into graphic design, and how did you advance to where you are today?
I was always involved in art and the art programs in school growing up. When I hit my last year of high school and had to decide what I wanted to do as a career, the thought of dying in order to make my paintings worth money wasn’t very appealing, so I choose to go a little more commercial with my art and major in graphic design. A lot of balancing college with work, long hours and a great start in a company helped to form my design career.

What do you most enjoy about being a graphic designer?
Just creating, sitting down with a drawing pen & sketch book and putting ideas down then being able to turn those ideas into something useful.

What skills are most important for a graphic designer?
I’d say one of the most important that you learn over time is tough skin. Not everyone is going to love your work so you need to keep from internalizing that and not let it turn you away from design. One skill set I wish came with being a graphic designer is the ability to read minds, it would make our job so much easier!

How do you keep your creativity when you’re working under pressure?
Change locations. Sometimes all it takes is a simple blanket laid out in a park under a tree to get your creativity flowing again.

Where do you go for inspiration?
I love getting inspiration from home decorating magazines, like Better Homes & Gardens. The use of textures, colors and patterns is very inspiring. However, really I pull inspiration from everything around me…I remember someone once asking me this and I told them it can come from anywhere, even the pattern on the toilet paper, which may or may not have happened to me. Ha!

How would you describe your design style?
Modern-Simple. I’m not good at all the fluff, I like clean, simple design.

What are some of your favorite projects that you’ve completed and why?
I recently designed a new ad campaign for my day job, it was something outside of the norm for the type of company, it made the dry content fun, it was well received and I even did the photography for it (no stock photos yay).

What is your favorite design in your current portfolio and why?
I’d say a brand identity piece I did for a local seller for etsy, however I’m working on a brand identity for a photographer right now that I think will be one of my favorites just because it fits my style of design so well (as does the etsy seller’s brand)

What types of assignments are you most attracted to?

I love packaging, that is my favorite type of design. The design I get the most of however are logos, which I also love, but packaging is so fun!

What are the tools of the trade that you use the most? Favorite gadget?
My drawing pens in a rainbow of colors and my sketch books (I’ve got so many), but I couldn’t put my designs to use without the Adobe Creative Suite. My favorite gadget, I’m addicted to my Crackberry but love my Wacom tablet for design work also.

What software do you use?
The standards, Illustrator, InDesign & PhotoShop.

If you could redesign anything… a favorite movie poster, an album cover, a product, etc… what would it be and why? Wow, anything? That’s so broad, there’s so much design out there I’d redesign. Lol. As a designer it’s rare that you can even drink a soda without thinking what you’d do differently. The UPS logo maybe (ha, designers will get this jab). Really though, nothing in particular jumps out at me right now, but I’d LOVE to have the opportunity to brand a wine company.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out as a designer?
Don’t design just to make things pretty, find the concept in the design, but also find your style and stand behind it. Like I said not everyone is going to love your work and that’s okay.

Can you share some recent designs with us?

Tell us more about your photography, What is the focus of your photography business?
Seniors, engagement, wedding & boudoir

How does your photography and design work compliment each other?
Well, one nice thing is being able to do my own marketing but that’s kind of a downside because I never have time to fully give it what I want. Really though without design I would have never even gotten started in photography. I started with black & white fine art film photography in college as a required course for design. As a designer, you should be able to go out and take your own photos when stock is not available.

What do you most enjoy about being a photographer?
Seeing my vision actually captured on film (um, well computer anyway) and the happiness clients feel when they can look back on those images.

How would you describe your photographic style?
I’m a mix between posed and not, I’ll get some of those everyone look here and then some more lifestyle photos. My processing style I would say is a clean image that is slightly moody.

Where is your favorite location to take photo’s? Beaches? Fields? City streets?
I love urban, definitely my favorite, but I’m very much addicted to evening light sunflare so anywhere I can get that, I’m good!

What is your favorite image in your current portfolio and why?
Recently I shot a wedding where it poured and poured and poured the day before and the day of. I will not lie and say I wasn’t totally nervous about the lack of light and outside shooting abilities. But I will tell you, I have some of the most amazing images embracing that rain. Dark, romantic images. My favorite, that captures everything about that day, is one with the bride & groom taking shelter from the rain under a dark overpass to get some portraits in and there is a dripping stream of rain falling beside them and they are so in love, you can tell nothing could matter less then the crappy weather.

Who are your influences? I would say one of my influences is Sarah Rhodes. We are nothing alike in terms of processing but her images are always so very inspiring to me. They get my creativity flowing and her comps are just awesome. The Boudoir Divas is another for their awesome boudoirness which attracted me to boudoir in the first place.

What types of assignments are you most attracted to?
Really all of the ones I listed above, I love each type for their own reasons.

What is currently in your photography bag?
Okay, here goes: Canon 5D, Canon 40D, 24-70L, 100mm Macro, 85mm 1.8, A couple Speedlites, lots and lots and lots of batteries & CF cards, lens cleaning cloth, diffuser, chapstick, business cards (I feel like I’m forgetting something). On my wish list is the 70-200L & Sigma 15mm Fisheye.

Mac or PC?
Mac totally and completely.

How important is Photoshop in your final images?
Well I’d certainly say it’s very important to really finish my images off and give it that something extra, but there is nothing like nailing that exposure in camera – makes that post processing time a whole lot faster!

What is your most used Photoshop tool, plug-in, action set etc.?
Probably the burn tool, I use it on 99% of my images to keep with my moody style.

Can you share some recent images with us?

Thank you again for your time and giving back, is there anything else you’d like to leave us with?
I really wish I could think of something profound to say right now, I’m feeling pressure to come up with some great line…I’ve got nothing, so I’ll just say thank you to Jessica for asking me to be interviewed and good luck to everyone out there choosing the design and/or photography path!

To see more of Jayme’s work and learn more about her visit her website and her blog!