Meet Simona Bunardzhieva of simoneone in San Francisco

Today we’d like to introduce you to Simona Bunardzhieva.

Simona, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was always really strongly interested in drawing like most kids are, but mine seemed almost like an unhealthy obsession. I wanted to paint on anything and everything – I painted over my room’s wallpapers (multiple times), over the furniture and my clothes, and my favorite canvas – I loved painting on my little sister’s face. I’m still not sure why.

When I was a teenager my rebellious side was kicking in, so I was more into graffiti – I formed a girl’s graffiti gang named GPC (“Girl Power Crew”). Now that I’m thinking – GGG (“Girls Graffiti Gang”) would have been so much of a better name…

When it was time for me to pick a college to continue my education my parents made a deal with me – they would pay for my art education if it had some obvious economical benefit to the career it would lead to – in other words if I would be making good money from it. So I chose to study Advertising and Art Direction. Ironically now as a full-time artist I’m making a much better living (and have a much healthier lifestyle) than if I were a graphic designer or an art director at an ad agency.

Drawing was always at the core of my skills, but in my early 20s I was avoiding it. I wanted to have a more “complicated” skill than just drawing. On one of my first graphic design internships one day someone brought watercolor to the studio and I spent my lunch break playing with it. It felt so familiar and so good – so natural. I think I realized in that moment that my entire path was going to change towards hand drawn illustration – bye bye, graphic design!

Seven + years later here am I – watercolor, and ink, and pencils and markers, and gouache and acrylic – I probably have enough art supplies to open a little store, and it’s definitely dominating the medium of my work. It’s funny – it’s like I had to come back to what I was doing as a child to really grow artistically.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think that anyone who has their own business has it smooth sailing from the beginning.

At the start there were definitely the questions every designer/artist straight out of school wonders about – Where to get my next client? How to promote my work? What to charge? How to file my taxes? How to register my business? There wasn’t information easily made available for this, so there was a lot of researching, figuring it out, asking around and sometimes just straight up guessing. It didn’t help that I was also moving a lot – I was first living and working in Barcelona, Spain, then London, UK, now – San Francisco, USA. Every place came with its own challenges, bureaucracies, rules, communication styles. But it all worked out.

I think my challenges now are about scaling my business. There is so much work I want to do, but I don’t have enough time! I want to operate as a multi-people business, but that’s not traditionally what other illustrators do. So I need to figure out a way.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’m an Illustrator and Fine Artist operating under the name simoneone. I draw and create illustrations for all kinds of purposes – illustrations for children’s books, for huge advertising conferences, for branding, fabric and apparel, storyboards for films, packaging for chocolates, coffee, beverages – you name it and I probably do it.

I also work on a lot of personal projects – whether that’s illustrating letters and numbers, practicing lettering and calligraphy or just drawing whatever image I have in my mind right now. Drawing keeps me sane and gives me purpose. It’s also nice when clients see its benefits and pay me to do it.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
The proudest moment keeps changing – when I first started I was just proud to be able to sustain myself financially 100% from drawing. Then when I spoke to an audience about my work for the first time. Then when I started teaching illustration to students.

The last six months of my career have been so outrageously good – I’ve been so busy with amazing projects like I didn’t even think was possible. I’ve been doing lots of events for very cool brands, I have been getting paid handsomely and have four potential representation agents interested in me. I just finished illustrating a young adults book by a major sports celebrity, created an illustration for Adobe to be shown all over Cannes Lions (biggest festival for advertising) and am working on a new very exciting brief for a great client to be released soon. So there has been a lot of pride recently. I’m trying to embrace it, learn from it and keep the pace.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.simoneone.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sim_one_one
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simoneone.artist
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sim_one_one
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/simoneone-illustrator-and-artist-san-francisco?osq=simoneone
• Other: www.simona-bunardzhieva.com

Image Credit:
Profile photo – by Julien Bauzin, Photo with simoneone sign at the back – by Bradley G Munkowitz, Underwater photo – by Lightform, All other photos Simona Bunardzhieva

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