An illustrator in Atlanta, running a small studio called The October Creative.
hi, I'M BRIA. I DRAW SLIGHTLY STRANGE, MOSTLY BEAUTIFUL THINGS FOR A LIVING.
I come from a long line of artists. Illustrators on my father's side, painters and designers on my mother's, the kind of lineage where everyone is always painting or doodling or creating something and no one finds it strange. The studio is my entry into that line, with a tablet instead of a paintbrush, and a head full of moths.
I illustrate for brands who want a little odd whimsy woven in. For couples who want their wedding to feel one of one. For people who want a portrait of the dog or the apartment or the bouquet that is no longer in season. And sometimes for no one at all, just to see what comes out.
If any of that sounds like you, you're in the right place.
BRIa williams, studio founder
WHAT IS AN
OCTOBER CREATIVE?
Someone who finds the beauty in the strange, the quiet, the romantic, and the slightly odd.
The name comes from October, obviously. The month I have always loved best, the month where everything begins to die and decay and quiet. Some people read October as eerie, or as the end of the good months. I read it as the most beautiful one. The earth knows when to rest, the leaves know when to let go. The whole world settles into something dim and quiet and lovely before it blooms again.
An October Creative is what I call the kind of person who finds the beauty in that. Someone who lingers in the strange, ornate, romantic, fanatical, and slightly odd parts. The lovers and the romantics, the witchy ones, the ones who collect old letters and curiosities and stranger things. The artists who make beauty outside the bounds of what most people consider conventional.
The work is for them. The work is from one of them.
2019
I opened a little Etsy shop on a whim. Logos, stationery, the kind of thing you make on the side of a day job. I called it The October Creative because October is my favorite month and I could not think of anything better. Seven years later, I still cannot.
the birth of
The october creative
2020
Everyone went inside. I went deeper. I started taking real client work, real wedding stationery, real branding projects. The shop stopped being a side thing and started being the thing.
THE WORLD GOT QUIETER, I GOT LOUDER
2022
Somewhere in there I spent four years inside a print and stationery company, running their partner program and leading their in-house design team. I grew the program from a few hundred people to over 8,000, helped build a design studio from scratch, and learned exactly how a creative practice runs when it has to run like a business.
A FOUR-YEAR DETOUR INTO ANOTHER WORLD
How I got here:
A SERIES OF SLIGHTLY UNEXPECTED events
More to come, almost certainly involving more moths.
2026
This April, I left everything else behind and went full time on the studio. Custom illustration is the heart of it. The shops are the catalog. The Instagram is a small imaginary magazine I run from my desk. The bunny is the staff.
the october creative (FORREAL this time)
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