“Play is everything.” Jennifer Wright on concocting the wondrous worlds of Broccoli magazine

Based out of Austin, Texas, Jennifer Wright is a designer who believes in sustainability-driven design and creating meaningful work. After over a decade of experience in the creative industry – spanning traditional advertising with Wieden+Kennedy to publishing with Kinfolk to brand design – Jennifer built Citron Studio on the notion of design that steers positive change. In 2019, she also started A Better Source, a free, public directory of environmentally-conscious resources for planet-loving designers and businesses.

Since 2017, her thoughtful approach to design and responsible creation found its way into Broccoli, a forward-thinking publication that celebrates cannabis culture through the non-stereotypical lens of art, fashion, and culture. The visionary behind the magazine’s weird, fantastical, and yet approachable design aesthetic, Wright oversees the editorial and brand design needs within the Broccoli world with sensitivity and a sense of play.

We spoke to Jennifer about her world-building process for Broccoli, how motherhood is opening up new perspectives in her work, and how sustainability and creativity can go hand in hand.

RK Hi, Jennifer. How’s it going?

JJW Good! I'm in Austin, Texas, and we had a very hot summer. We’re just a few weeks into fall but it’s great to be outside again.

RK How did you gravitate towards the world of branding and publication design?

JJW Like so many designers, when I was younger, I wanted to be an artist. But there was the voice in my head that knew I needed something safer that I could actually earn money from. So commercial art seemed like the appropriate path. I actually didn’t study design, but was lucky enough to get a job working at my university making theatre posters and scholarship brochures. So it was a self-taught job that led me through different paths, where I worked in small branding firms to big advertising agencies to small publishing companies, and a really brief spell doing home goods and fashion for a Japanese company. Design is interesting because it takes you everywhere. But I think the core of my work has revolved around branding and editorial publishing.

RK Take us back in time – what led you to start Citron Studio in 2017?

JJW It was a human need to have more freedom. I had worked for so many great companies but there was a part of me that just needed more space and freedom to control the creative process, or even the load I had been taking on. To be at a desk from 9 to 5 every day felt really constraining creatively. It was about stepping away and asking myself what kind of creative work I wanted to put out in the world. And this is a very privileged thing to get to do. To pause and ask those questions solidified having the freedom to control a bit of the creative work I take on, and the pace at which I take it on. That was the #1 drive to start my own practice.

I started to become curious and hungry to do work that felt more planet-minded.

RK And how would you describe your design practice at the studio?

JJW I wish I had a concise answer for this. I think it has just been the by-product of a personal quest to use creativity for things that align in terms of a value system. And that’s a very subjective thing. But I recognized over the years of working in different environments that it could be really draining to use your creative energy for things that didn’t feel like productive contributions to the world. We all have to earn money and pay the bills, so it was a necessary path to be working for large-scale corporations and in advertising. But when I got to a point where that didn’t have to be the path forward, I started to become curious and hungry to do work that felt more planet-minded and a little bit more in support of other artists and my community.

Presently, the projects I love most are work based in Austin itself. After the pandemic, I think we’re all kind of really craving those human connections in person. And it’s really nice to go have coffee with the client and see the creative work show up in real life in my own town. That’s currently where the practice is working. And it’s not always possible; I certainly have clients that are not in Austin or Texas. The ones that are here are so gratifying, I hope to do more of that. But I would say my worlds are branding, packaging, and then Broccoli is its own ecosystem of publication work.

RK You’ve worked on some wonderful publications like Kinfolk and Broccoli. What’s your overarching process when it comes to world-building and crafting a unique visual identity for a publication?

JJW I love that expression: world-building. I have the privilege of working with Anja. We got to work together for years at Kinfolk, which was such a gift because it’s been about 10 years of collaborating with her. Over time, it’s like our brains have been able to really mesh together. So when she comes to me with a new project, she’ll always provide a creative brief, be it written or on the phone. And it’s a privilege, where now, when she describes something, I say ‘I know what’s floating around in your brain’. Sometimes, she’ll provide visual references, and I’ll kick a few things back to her to see if it resonates.

Anja has been such an inspiration in this idea of playing with other worlds and fantasy, and delighting in things that aren’t necessarily considered productive or have socially acceptable meaning in our systems that we live in. But truly, what is more fun than diving deep into the world of cats or mushrooms or snails, as we did with the off-shoot publications at Broccoli?

Some funny context is that when I was at Kinfolk, I was more on the art direction side of things. During my time there, there was actually never any publication design. I really wanted to do that kind of work but it didn’t make sense for them at the time. So when Anja came forward with this idea, the design soul in me said, ‘Yes, I want to design a magazine more than anything!’

In terms of world-building, I think that first issue was a very long process because we were trying to define what our visual language was. It was about trying to arrive at fun things like ‘a little bit trippy but not traditional psychedelic at all’ and ‘feminine, but not only for women,’ and bringing in some of nature and natural elements like flowers but doing it in a way that felt otherworldly and other planet-like. Trying to find typefaces that spoke to those different notes we were trying to play with was my favourite part of the process.

RK Talking about the off-shoots, I’m loving each publication and project, like Catnip and Mushroom People, the Oracle cards, and photobooks like A Weed is a Flower: Artful Cannabis Photography and Spores. What made the team choose to expand and explore these alternate publications and merchandise?

JJW For a while, we were tinkering with the idea of whether we wanted to offer more products in terms of apparel and home goods. But we’ve just realised over the years that publishing is what we’re good at. And it’s also best for our company in terms of revenue. So we’re just going to keep turning out fun printed content because that’s what we love doing and what people want.

But it’s all an extension of that world-building. Like we did a Mushroom Oracle Deck, which is part of the Mushroom People world, and we’ll continue to extend those worlds in little ways. The artist Bethany van Rijswijk, who did both our Mushroom and Seashell Oracle decks, is so talented! It's amazing to work with someone who when given a creative brief can make 40 pieces of art, all of which are stunning.

RK What does it mean to design a magazine, and then its off-shoot publications, but still ensure they belong to the same ‘visual world’? How do you navigate these different personas?

JJW Well, it's kind of a tangle in my mind, but one example would be Mushroom People. Anja provided a written creative brief with a few thumbnails. But the words that stuck out to me were ‘a creepy mystical fairy land in a very shadowy forest’. And I just went ‘Got it’. When we have those keywords and little bits of visual references, it opens things up. But I would say that a huge contributing piece to developing these worlds is the artwork that flows in. And sometimes, that comes on early, sometimes it’s much later, but those can really inform how creepy and mystical we are going, or how playful and light and bright we’re taking that issue.

I have white walls around me and for some projects, I print things out and paste them up because I just need to live in that world with the art hovering over my head. Also, our team is all over the world, so Pinterest is pretty important for us to share visuals. I’d say that’s our #1 tool for visual sharing. I always start out looking at the collection of visual assets Anja has gathered through Pinterest and then think about how to layer those different elements, add a few of my own and develop it from there.

RK Are there any common strands, design-wise, that extend from the main magazine to all the off-shoots? Any Easter eggs tucked in for true Broccoli fans?

JJW That’s a great question. Well, my favourite Easter eggs are my accidental design mistakes. We just did Catnip, and there’s a section where our readers sent photographs of their cats and I accidentally put the exact same cat side by side. So there’s those silly Easter eggs. But we’re going to do a second Mushroom People, and a little insider tip is that we’re going to probably do a tiny flip book in the corner of it. So that when you look, it doesn’t look like anything. But if you flip it, there’ll be a little animation.

RK In a world that’s steadily going digital, why did you choose to focus on the magazine as a format and print as a medium?

JJW I’m personally having digital fatigue at times where I’m truly addicted to my phone, and maybe many people are too. So in the evenings, if I can actually read a printed book or a magazine, it settles the nervous system. And I think that’s part of the process of almost reconnecting to bodily sensations, the human experience, and how that is tied to living on this planet. It’s not all happening in another world on our devices; there’s a sensory element to it!

RK Are there any other specific magazines that you go to for self-soothing or for inspiration?

JJW I had just gotten my son down for a nap, and didn’t want to look at my phone while waiting for him to wake up. So I picked up a magazine that I haven't read in a while – but one that I love – and it's called DEEM. It’s a great read about social activism. We’re living in very intense times and just reading about people that are doing something about it is really inspiring.

RK I also understand you’re fascinated by paper forms. How do you ensure that print still feels special?

JJW I’d say it’s a 50-50 relationship between Anja and I. She found a great printer out of China, so in terms of paper, we’re sort of limited to what they use over there, but we found some great options. And each project has its own budget, which dictates how much fun we can have. So with Spores, doing the die-cuts was a little bonus thing we could afford to work into the budget. With Catnip Issue 1, we went all out with fun production details. You were asking about Easter eggs before, but throughout the magazine, there’s little shiny varnished paw prints walking across spreads, there’s a die-cut cat scratcher, and a tiny, bound magazine written by a cat.

RK Let’s talk about A Better Source, and your journey towards sustainable design. Have you always been an eco-conscious individual?

JJW I launched the project in 2019, and I think what was going on in my head, which I know so many people are experiencing, is that we’re all living with anxiety in our bodies about the planet. And something has to give, something has to change. It’s a very frustrating experience to wait on massive systems, governments, energy leaders to make these changes.

I was asking myself - ‘What can I do as an individual?’ And it’s a tricky question because the answer is ‘very little’. But there’s also a part of myself that wants to move through the world in alignment with a value system that I hold dear as much as possible. It dawned on me that what is within my reach and capacity is helping steer clients towards more environmentally-minded production choices. We’re not a big company producing hundreds of thousands of brochures but sometimes, we do 10,000 units, which is not insignificant. So that was the origin story.

And then I started sharing some resources, papers, vendors and packaging options with colleagues in the industry who were also designers. And I realized that people do care about this. In 2019, we weren't talking about it quite as much as we are now. But I realized people want this. That just put a fire in me, and for months, I was just researching through the night, compiling information, learning as much as I could, and built a website on Cargo. I had some amazing folks helping me along the way in terms of research for the directory, helping fix bugs with the website, and all kinds of great stuff.

But when I launched in November 2019, shortly after that, the world kind of turned upside down. And then I became pregnant and didn't quite know what I was walking into, and got hit pretty hard by the difficulties of pregnancy. So I lost that momentum to keep it going. The project is still accessible online but it needs a lot of gardening, updating and refreshing because a lot has changed since then. It's a project I want to bring back into relevancy so that it can be a resource for people. So at the moment, it’s in a dormant state, which is unfortunate.

RK Why isn’t there more conversations and action around this within the design industry? What is the need of the hour for more eco-conscious creation?

JJW There are a number of companies out there that are eager for an environmentally-friendly solution. We consulted with a company that was doing household products like cleansers and soaps packaged in plastic containers, and at that time, there simply weren’t enough solutions in the market that were fully compostable. But since then, some companies have come out with amazing solutions like dry tablets that you add water to. The reason I’m bringing this up is that so often, designers come in too late into the process. The product already exists and someone wants you to brand it and package it. But you could find the environmentally-friendly solution in the product development stage itself, because it’s not easy to find a fully compostable jar with a pumper on top in the existing market.

We are all in this modern era where with each passing year, we have so much convenience and comfort in our lives; that ever-increasing convenience and comfort comes at a cost. So it’s about re-learning things and developing new perspectives or habits.

Play is everything.

RK Have you had mentors along this journey, whose work or approach shaped your own?

JJW I haven’t, but wish I had. My very first boss out of college was a woman, and she’s the only female boss I’ve ever had. I don’t mean to genderize this, but she’s the best boss I’ve ever had. She really showed me what strong, compassionate leadership looks like. So it wasn’t mentorship in terms of design or creativity, but in terms of how to work with a team and do so effectively and respectfully, and being human with people.

I imagine globally, we are starting to wake up to that reality where we’re humans, not machines. And everyone has complicated lives. So when leadership or employers can be flexible and trusting of people, it just makes the world of a difference, and she was a good example of that.

RK What is motherhood like, and how is that feeding into your creative practice?

JJW In terms of motherhood…I think that having a child – who is now three – has just been a really immediate reminder of the importance of play, especially in one’s practice. It’s so easy to just churn out work and be doing commercially-driven, client-specific creative explorations; but being around a child is like, ‘Oh my gosh, play is everything!’ There's no fear of messing up.

It has been an inspiration for me to get hobbies; I haven’t had hobbies in years because I didn’t have a lot of time. I’m learning an instrument for the first time and trying to learn weaving and doing these things that have nothing to do with the screen or my client work necessarily. But I can feel that they work their way in there in ways I can’t put into words exactly. So he’s probably been my inspiration for doing that.

RK Do you have any ongoing personal projects that are keeping you creatively charged at the moment?

JJW In terms of work, I’m doing more local work, the next Broccoli and Mushroom People Issue 2, which I’m very excited about. Broccoli is probably the majority of my time presently, which is wonderful because it's my happy space.

Jennifer Wright

Citron Studio