Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Clenn De Mesa.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Marc Clenn. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m a Fine Arts graduate overseas and have so much passion for drawing. Back then, I let go of this passion and focused more on digital because I haven’t found where my real media was. I struggled so much as to where will I place my self in the mix. I don’t have identity and style, so rather than stop, I was trained to be resourceful. I shifted my focus to graphic designing.
My frustrations and insecurities to be a good artist boosted myself to learn a lot of skills digitally. I became an all-around designer, just absorbing whatever I can, so as to never get behind of other designers. I taught myself to be adaptive to where and what industry will I be. I let go of the idea of becoming an artist.
Ten years after, I became a Senior Designer in one of the famous clubs in Downtown LA. In this job, me and my team pushed ourselves to be better and found my passion in the dance music industry. I explored more on my creativity since I got a chance to work in different shows for different artists. I designed a lot of flyers and developed different campaigns, all these with the help of my team. We pioneered different campaigns and strategies in marketing each show.
Until one day, I stumbled upon this drawing app on a tablet. A friend showed me how I can express my creativity using the iPad and in the process, I realized 2 things; that this will be the future of designing and I fell in love with it. In order to learn more, I tried to practice and incorporate it into my workflow.
In this learning process, I saw that I can upload some of my work in Behance, and so I did. It never crossed my mind that something special might happen. My work got featured in Adobe, as a designer and as a fan of the system, it really was an honor to get featured on it. They featured not just one, but six of my works. That’s when I realized I got something going on.
A few days after, I started to get different proposals to license my work from different upcoming brands but my guts was telling me something. I was not sure what it was back then, but having a business degree helped me understand that I already have a product and all I have to do is market it. And then I realized that all my life, I was being prepped for this moment (learning all these skills such as web development, marketing, design, and doing layouts, understanding the business side and meeting various people too). That was when Clenn Design was born.
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?
The very common that I thought of were the finances and time. Living alone and working while having my masters/doctorate degree was not an easy task. Also, imagine the time I need to divide doing 100% in all of them on top of creating artwork and products.
Being very skillful in a lot of things helped me cut down my costs and learned that even with a minimal budget, as long as you put the time in, you will get there eventually. Not the fastest route, but still better than no path at all.
At the end of the day, as long as you gave your all, it will be fine. At a certain point, while I’m doing all these, I just realized that it does not matter if I get rich with Clenn Designs or not, but the fact that strangers appreciate my work, it was more than enough for me to go on.
I would say the path was not easy, but it was a process. I’m just enjoying the ride while I can.
Please tell us about Clenn Designs.
Clenn Designs is a brand that revolves around my artworks. I do different illustrations and build different products around such as pins, shirts, prints, stickers and a lot more.
All my artworks are made on my iPad. All of them are made up of so many lines and is all vector based.
I’m really proud of my artworks and what I have accomplished at this point.
I am apart from other companies because these are all original art. The whole embodiment of who I am, things I want to express and the message I want to send out.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was young, my mom taught me the value of things. She taught me and my siblings to work hard for us to achieve what we want.
Also, aside from my family, friends helped mold me into who I am today.
Back in the Philippines, we have a simple life. I would say I had a wonderful childhood because I got to experience playing outside before all these digital games and stuff became accessible to everyone.
Contact Info:
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
