Meet Madeline Liu | Digital Illustrator, Freelance Marketer, Creative Storyteller

We had the good fortune of connecting with Madeline Liu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Madeline, we’d love to hear what makes you happy.
Being a curious creative: I love simply learning and creating! It allows me to improve my craft outside of my freelance marketing work and also enter a new headspace—one where I’m world building and capturing emotions of the human experience. Have you ever heard a song that inspired you or a movie that just made your heart strings pull? This is the same feeling of visual storytelling and creating for me.

Helping others feel heard: Everytime I make a piece of content, art piece, or photo that connects with someone, it brings me joy when it can help someone through a difficult season of life or simply allows them to feel heard. I feel so empowered when someone even tells me that my pieces, my characters, or my journey inspired them to start digital art or their own creative venture.

The little joys: In the bigger picture of life, we only have so much time on this world. I love being able to spend the beautiful moments of life with good friends, enjoy good food, and simply express gratitude for the conscious choice of everything we do and have. Sometimes it’s just parking a little bit further from my destination to just walk and enjoy the weather outside. Other times, it’s just having banter and enjoying times with university friends while I’m still in my 20’s and able to share that moment. Truly being as present as possible is so key to my personal fulfillment.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Hello! My name is Madeline, the founder and illustrator behind Notebeans Stationery, an art brand aiming to bridge creativity and kindness through illustrations of meaningful life experiences. My brand consists of three original characters—Kato the cat, Paya the penguin, and Kuma the Samoyed. Today, I continue to create meaningful illustrations of life and share this with others to inspire them or to help them do the same through my Instagram content, my art merch, and commissions for businesses who want to tell their creative story.

The Journey: When I first started my business, it was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2020, when California wildfires and AAPI attacks were on the rise. During this time, I felt overwhelmed and wanted to do something better with my money at the time. As I was getting back into art at this time, I started Notebeans Stationery as a way to generate donation funds for a project hosted by Global Giving to aid California firefighters at that time. From there, I illustrated as I waited for the next product to ship to me and before you knew it, I was building traction on Instagram and growing a community.

The Why: My mission at the time was to bridge creativity and kindness, donating a large portion fo my profits towards charity projects through Global Giving. I felt hugely inspired by being able to engage in what I loved while still upholding some sense of CSR (corporate social responsibility), even if I was just a small business.

Key lessons I learned:
1. Have a list of role models: Every person’s artwork is a remix of their role models’ work, personal worldviews, and creative vision. Write down a list or create a mood board of artists that you look up to and reference this as you’re learning or looking for some inspiration. Remember that learning from others’ art vs copying is very different!
2. Get going, get good, then get smart: this was a framework of learning from Ali Abdaal, a popular productivity YouTuber I follow. Abdaal advocated for this pathway of simply getting into the habit (ie. 5 minutes every day) regardless of quality, then to focus on intentionally improving technique, and finally to build systems around your craft to make it easier or more fun for you! Personally, I take about 4-5 hours to illustrate each piece and have a design prompting stage that I set for every single illustration (this establishes lighting, composition, feeling, mood, values, etc).
3. Meet your customers in person: when I started to do pop up events, I truly learned to power of talking to your customers and learning what aspects they liked or disliked about the brand. I once thought many of my pieces weren’t good enough, until I went in person and realized the differences between online oo and in person traffic.
4. Create for an audience of 0: In early stages of the journey, I was more tied to the numbers of Instagram and was extremely hard on myself if a piece didn’t perform as well as I thought it would have. Over time, I recognized that if I could create for an audience of 0, I could create for any size audience.
5. Create from a place of inspiration and switch mediums: I believe that visual art is a way of translating the way you see the world and sending that off to other people to translate it into their own unique life experiences. So many people have told me that my artwork has helped them in a complex time of their life, or that they felt heard through my pieces. I try to jump between different visual mediums that practice the same ideology, such as photography, videography, watercolor, crochet, etc. This allows your mind to refresh perspective and take inspiration from other crafts!
6. Love the process of learning: When it comes to running a creative business, there are two key components here: creativity and business. No individual, no matter how skilled, comes with these traits completely mastered. It takes intentionality and curiosity to enhance your skill sets in illustration or other visual art mediums, and it takes seeking resources (books, videos, online guides) to build business acumen and technical skills. Having this balance. I took a lot of time throughout my creative and business journey to take free and some paid education materials from artists I admired or creative entrepreneurs I liked. Although I am also a slow reader, I’ve been doing my best to read a few pages of an interesting book every day. This small amount of wisdom would guide my day and help inspire any decisions I was having trouble making.

Ultimately, I am a curious creative who just loves capturing the joys of life through visual storytelling and illustrations. I hope you’ll join me on this journey as an aspiring digital illustrator, a creative business owner trying to tell your story, or just someone who appreciates art! Follow me on Instagram to see my content on digital illustration, travel, and specialty coffee (I used to be a barista and am addicted to learning the craft as well!)

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Best way to explore a city is through its cafes: As a specialty coffee enthusiast, I always love talking to baristas about the area the cafe is in and sometimes you end up finding hidden gems within the neighborhood or make a new friend!

San Francisco and South Bay: Typically, I spend a lot of time all over the Bay Area! If I’m in San Francisco, I LOVE going to Ocean beach, driving up Skyline Blvd and the Great Highway and seeing people enjoying the beautiful weather. If I have some extra time I will visit Andytown Coffee Roasters right by the beach or head to Coffee Movement on Balboa St. Some favorite dinner spots for me include Italian Homemade Company for pasta or Bansang Korean for a nice dinner out. If I’m hanging out in South Bay, I love going to downtown Saratoga area to Sues Gallery and Cafe or Living Room Coffee in Campbell. If it’s getting late I might walk down Santana row and enjoy the liveliness there before eating Pizza Antica!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are a few people! I am extremely grateful for these folks for truly being pivotal people in my journey to where I am today: ⭐️ My mom: a serial restaurant entrepreneur who always believed that we are meant to pursue our dreams and strengths in life. My number one fan from day one.
⭐️ Tim: my partner who has been there in my highest of highs and lowest of lows in the creative entrepreneurship journey. You’ll likely see him at my pop ups!
⭐️ Galina: a huge mentor and big sis who inspired female entrepreneurship for me. Her sustainable boba bottle innovation, My BobaMate was truly an inspiration to me.
⭐️ Professor Nicole: my business professor who gave me opportunities to pitch my business to her capstone class and ignited confidence in my journey.
⭐️ Exhilo Creative Meetups: a creative community hosted by Curtis, who brought together a tribe of creatives who just simply love to go through life and tell stories through their work.
⭐️ Jason: my photography mentor and close friend who shed so much wisdom and perspective on visual storytelling and overall outlook on life.
⭐️ Kirstie: my business coach, founder of A Jar of Pickles, and an incredible kind and wise entrepreneur who I look up to so much in my current journey.

Website: Notebeansstationery.com

Instagram: Notebeansstationery

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madelineliu/

Other: Notebeansstationery.carrd.co (virtual business card)
Madelineliu.com ; password: “I love coffee” (marketing portfolio)

Image Credits
Instagrams: @xninjason @tvl.cr3