In 2019, just before the world stopped, Louise French and her partner quit the rat race and left London for Manchester. They took a bit of a scenic route. They went via Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Chile – all by bike. They even explored some of the most remote places in the Andes. What’s amazing is that neither had done much bikepacking before, “unless you count a weekend in the Peak District”. I don’t, but it was nice to learn of this part of Louise’s journey, after having met her at a recent Creative Boom IRL in Manchester.
“It was a shock to the system when we arrived in Colombia, took a wrong turn and had to push our bikes up to a 3,500m pass,” she tells us. “We didn’t give up, though. We went on to cross even more high-altitude passes of up to 5,000m in Peru and Bolivia, camped in the clouds and next to giant glaciers, got stuck in three snowstorms, crossed the Salar de Uyuni, and covered the whole 1,240km Carretera Austral route through Patagonia in Chile. Not to mention getting stuck in the middle of a political coup in La Paz for three weeks.”
Now, I’m not close to Louise. We’ve only met once. But we chatted a lot. And I can totally picture her, spreading maps out on a table, a huge excited grin on her face, being completely laid-back about the prospect of an adventure in South America, without actually realising what she’s letting herself in for. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. She’s the kind of friend, I imagine, who doesn’t overthink things or let the old “what if it all goes wrong” worry hold her back. I like her. She’s someone you want in your gang.
She survived, anyway. They got home in March 2020, six days before lockdown. But that was the easy part of her journey. What happened next was pretty tough in comparison, and it didn’t involve any mountains. Louise had been freelancing full-time since 2014, and from the outside it looked fine. She’d just finished a project providing UI and game illustrations for Flight Club Darts, and more work was in the pipeline. All was good. But her own work had taken a backseat.
“In the years before we moved to Manchester, I really struggled with my personal work,” she says. “I used to start so many things, only to give up halfway through because ‘it wasn’t good enough’. Confidence and self-doubt were the real issue. It wasn’t as much of a problem with commissioned work. You were getting paid and had a deadline, so if it wasn’t working, you had to keep going until it did. It took years to break through that pain barrier with my own stuff.”
Oh gosh, I know that feeling. You’re motivated when you’re getting paid, but side projects? Bah. They need a different kind of energy behind them. And we often put way too much pressure on ourselves to make everything perfect. So we stall, and nothing gets done.
Louise was so stuck that she even asked Ralph Steadman for advice at his own exhibition. “I remember him saying that everyone has a style they naturally work in, and it’s best not to worry or overthink it. It was a good answer, and I definitely took it on board.”
So when did it click into place? Ralph’s advice? No, it was those difficult moments in the Andes. “When I was pushing my bike up that mountain, there was no option to stop because it was hard. You just had to keep going until you were at the top. Even if it was a snail’s pace, you were still moving forward. I think that mindset carried over into my own work. I committed to finishing things, even when it was hard and the self-doubt crept in. And it’s necessary to do this; otherwise you’ll have no idea what works, what doesn’t and what to do differently next time.”
Looking at Louise’s website now, it’s clear she also found that style. It’s friendly and cheeky, charming and whimsical – very much her. But there are homages to her adventures, too. She’s created an entire South America series, one of my fave prints being Cycling Colombia. “There was so much inspiration, I felt the need to capture it,” she says. She made them on the road, would you believe, on the rest days between expeditions, working fast so they could get moving again.
It was the first proper series of prints she’d ever completed, too. A whole seven years after graduating. Then lockdown arrived, the client work dried up, and she suddenly had more time. It was then that she launched her online print shop. “I definitely felt something click after that.”
I know 2020 wasn’t an easy time, but it did allow so many creatives to pause and consider what might be next. Especially when we couldn’t do a lot “in real life”.
Speaking of which, another of Louise’s income streams disappeared overnight: live scribing. Through her studio, Think and Visualise, Louise draws keynotes in real time on two-metre walls, and the practice has taken her from UNICEF in Bangkok to Audible in New York. (Side note: She’s one of those people I’d feel lucky to sit next to at dinner parties because you know she’ll have a million and one brilliant stories to tell.)
Anyway, she’s been doing this since 2013, and it still occasionally gets her heart racing. “At one particular conference, I was on stage behind the speaker. At one point during his keynote, I must have stopped drawing and was just looking at him, waiting for the key point. He turned around and looked at me in front of 200 people and went, ‘What?’ I said I was ‘waiting for the key point’. The whole room laughed as if I was saying he was waffling or something. I probably went bright red. He carried on and eventually said, ‘which leads me to the key point’, emphasising it, and the room laughed again.”
Oh, many of us have been there. It often turns out alright. But the closest Louise has come to disaster was a two-day event in Brussels when nobody had primed the canvas, and it simply drank her Posca pens. “I went outside to have a little meltdown and phoned my mum in a panic. She told me to go back in and get on with it, which I did – you have to, don’t you? It wasn’t my best work, but the client had no idea and was pleased with the result.” There’s a lesson in there somewhere about climbing mountains, mums, and getting back on the bike.
What other happy challenges has Louise faced since then? She’s become a mum. “I’ve had to turn down work due to two pregnancies and maternity leaves. Then there’s the general fear that you’ll get left behind as you don’t have as much time. Also, I am generally exhausted trying to do it all. Our youngest is only one, so this is the hard bit,” she says.
And then there’s AI. “I’ve had periods where it has really gotten me down, and I’ve questioned what I am doing with my life,” she admits. “Do I need to retrain? What would I even do? And as much as I’d love to live in an off-grid cabin and start prepping for the apocalypse, I have two kids now and need to be more optimistic about the future.”
Ah. Now I remember why I enjoyed our chat. One of my favourite subjects! Off-grid cabins and surviving the end of times. We swapped some decent tips and observations. Recommended a few YouTube channels, too. But let’s be honest, we do have to be optimistic. Louise’s advice is to focus on what we can control and keep moving forward. “AI can’t connect with us on a human level,” she says. “So I’ll keep doing my in-person live stuff, going to print fairs and meeting people in real life, touching grass, you know. And if not, then the cabin in the woods is a good backup.”
I’ve heard the plans. I know where she’d go. I’ve looked it up. But until then, what else is she working on? It transpires, a children’s book. It’s only a draft, but it’s ready to go, and she has two more stories in the series. It was good enough to get an agent to sign her. So far, publishers have called it “a bit out there and maybe not commercial enough”. Yet, she isn’t giving up. “I’ve invested so much time and energy into it that I really want to get it out there,” she says. “Maybe I will self-publish. Let’s see.”
Knowing what I now know about Louise, I wouldn’t be surprised if she makes it happen. Anyone who can push a heavy bike up steep mountains all day and keep going has everything she needs to be a success. From where I’m standing, she’s doing pretty damn well.
