People and Blogs: Erica Fustero

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

¡Hola! I’m Erica, a multidisciplinary designer from Spain, currently based in Mataró, a city by the sea near Barcelona.

I like doing many different things. I've usually paid my bills working in visual design and marketing, but I always tend to gravitate towards illustration and comics.

Right now I'm mildly obsessed with photography and have been making a drawing a day for 7 months (and counting) illustrating my life's adventures.

Aside from making things, I also like listening to music, watching movies, reading, surrounding myself with beautiful objects, meeting people, cooking and eating, discovering interesting places around me... And of course, talking about all these things on my blog.

What's the story behind your blog?

When I was a teenager I got into punk-rock and alternative music. It was because I started posting on music forums that I met my friend Andrea. She was very active on the Internet and, inspired by her, I also started using platforms like LiveJournal, Fotolog, MySpace or Flickr.

In 2007, I started a blog on Blogger. On it, like on all those other platforms, I shared comics, photos, thoughts, and things I liked.

After a while of posting regularly, there always came a time when I felt the need to delete everything and start over. Sadly, I never saved my posts, so I'm grateful to Wayback Machine for letting me take a look at some of the things I wrote.

I also had a few collaborative blogs along the way, like Fresquito de cagar (Poop chills), where my friend José and I posted comic strips, Muertos de asco (Bored stiff), a webcomic series written by María Rubio and drawn by me, or Primera vez (First time), a collective project where we drew things we had never drawn before.

In 2015, I moved to a self-hosted website built using WordPress. My website has gone through many versions, with and without a blog. For years, I used my website as a portfolio and Instagram as a substitute for a blog. Then, in 2022, I felt like I needed a place outside of social media where all my work, drawings, photos, and writing could co-exist, so I added a blog again and have been posting ever since.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I don't have a set frequency. Sometimes I post three days in a row, sometimes I go quiet for weeks. I usually get the urge to write when I have new projects to share, when I've visited somewhere interesting, or when I've been trying something new with photography.

I start my drafts in Obsidian, the app I use for all my writing. I try to make my texts as spontaneous as possible (which means there are sometimes typos). In the past, some versions of my blog were in English or bilingual, but now I write mostly in Spanish, because I feel like I edit myself too much in English. Plus, I'm funnier in Spanish (or so I'd like to think).

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I prefer to write in a quiet, calm space, so I usually write from home. If inspiration strikes I don't mind writing a draft on my phone or scribbling down some notes in the corner of a notebook, but I always write the final version on my laptop, which I rarely take out of the house.

Drawing is different though. I carry my notebooks and iPad everywhere, I like to draw in cafes and on trains, and I often listen to music or talk to friends while I draw.

But for sure, the right environment definitely does it for me. When I force myself to write or draw in a place where I don't feel comfortable, I often don't like the end result.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

My website is built on Wordpress.org, hosted by Cdmon and designed with Semplice.

Semplice is a visual and highly customizable theme that allowed me to forget about coding to make my website look the way I wanted. It is meant to be used with portfolios, so the default blog is a bit simple but fits most of my blogging needs.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

For years I was obsessed with having the right design for my blog, using the right platform, publishing the right content. What I was doing never fit with the idea I had in my head or what other people were doing.

It took me many years to realize that the only thing that matters is accepting who you are and being consistent. So I guess if I were to start a blog now, I would try to be kinder to myself.

Wordpress frustrates me sometimes, but I don't want to go through another redesign right now. However, if I were to build my website now, I would probably go with a static site generator.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I switched to self-hosting through Promsite, a Cdmon program that sponsors hosting for creatives. I've been part of this program since 2012, so I don't pay anything for hosting. I had to buy a license to use Semplice (about 150€) and I pay about 20€ a year for the domain.

Aside from the occasional donation to Ko-Fi, I don't make any revenue from my blog, but I think it's only natural to try to make a living doing something you're passionate about.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I like to collect interesting blogs and websites in the Internet friends section on my website.

I love blogs that feel like you're reading someone else's diary, so I'm always excited when Javier and Muan post a new entry. I also enjoy reading Christoph's and Anh’s monthly posts.

And because newsletters are the new blogs of these days, some of my favorite newsletters include my friend Andrea's What I learnt from teenage films, Nazaret Escobedo's autobiographical writings on Fetén, Kristoffer’s Naive weekly, which is part postcard, part ode to the odd and poetic internet, and Abel Cuevas' El Drugstore, a newsletter about pop culture and design, mixed with autobiographical anecdotes.

I'd love to hear what each of them has to say.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

As much as I love the internet, I'm all about physical objects. I have a lot of records, books, comics, zines, clothes and designer objects. I also collect ephemera and vintage toys.

I love doing swaps and seeing other people’s collections. Maybe you can share your collection with me if you have one?

Beside my website I'm on many social networks, so don't be a stranger :)