Design Spotlight: Liz Van Steenburgh

Our Design Spotlight today falls on Liz Van Steenburgh of Starstock Greetings – thanks for letting us catch a glimpse of you and your work!

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I’m Liz Van Steenburgh from Starstock Greetings.  I’m a self-taught photographer and graphic designer from rural New York State.

After many years with a strong interest in photography and other creative endeavors, I took the plunge about 7 years ago with a cheap $100 camera and joined a few stock photography agencies, when they were all brand new businesses.  Being a stock photographer has taught me quite alot about photography and creativity in general.  I now work full time for one of the major stock photo companies in a much less glamorous position 🙂

My focus soon turned to graphic design, and I learned about GCU through my friend and fellow contributor, Denise, from dbvisualarts, and started making cards from my stock photos.  Needing a little more variety, I started buying commercial-use graphics and clipart from people with much more talent for Illustration than I could ever hope to have.

Thanks to their talent and generosity in offering products and licenses that allow me to create cards and products from their work, I now enjoy a fairly successful graphic design business, making cards, invitations and other printable items.  I really enjoy mixing graphics, type and colors to come up with something new.  I also enjoy blending my photographs with grungy textures to give them a whole new (old) look, as I’m a big fan of that whole aged, textured, torn and tattered look.

Despite all the graphic art I have purchased and all the photographs I have taken, my best selling card series at GCU doesn’t incorporate graphics OR photography.  I made this using some basic Photoshop shapes and 1 bow brush.  It continues to sell constantly, much to my amazement.  I guess there’s something to be said about “less is more”.  I hope it encourages those who may feel that only professional photographers or artists can succeed, because this card clearly shows that is not necessarily the case at all.

Thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about myself with all of you.