JULY, 2025
Meet Lauren Hinds, an Illustrator and cartoonist living and working in Trinidad & Tobago with more than a decade of experience marked by a catalogue of stories told in both handmade, self-published books and formally published successes.
Lauren began her career as a freelance illustrator with the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian while studying Graphic Design and bookbinding at the John Donaldson Technical Institute (UTT). She later travelled to Vermont to pursue her other passions: drawing and writing comics. Then she returned to acquire a B.A. in English Literature with a Minor in Film Studies at UWI in Trinidad.
I’ve been impressed by Lauren’s work and career for a while now. We both began our formal education at John D, pursuing Graphic Design. And while my career led me to specialise in Branding and build Designer Island, I greatly admire individuals capable of translating ideas and stories directly from their imagination. Lauren creates comics about childhood and adolescent experiences that resonate with both Caribbean and global readers, and she encourages her audience to make their own discoveries in the pages of her bespoke sketchbooks and journals.
I think Illustrators have a special superpower. A gift of visual translation and creation that AI poorly imitates. Illustrators possess the ability to tell stories not just with words and a few carefully selected images. Illustrators can visualise worlds and fit the details which would be at home in chapters, into the tiny dialogue box.
The fact that Lauren has managed this creative career seemingly quietly from her home in Trinidad will surprise many, thus when I finally sent the email asking to interview her, I was happy she indulged my interest.
Tell us about some your published books..
Lauren: My mini comic Jeremy was published with Paper Rocket Mini Comics in 2020 and I recently illustrated my first picture book titled 100 Goats and Granny (2025) with the author Atinuke and published by Walker Books (UK) and Candlewick Press (USA).
Where’d you grow up?
Lauren: I grew up in Trinidad, on my grandmother’s (my father’s mom) farm with my parents and siblings and an extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins. There were four families in the same space so the environment was always filled with children, families, friends, neighbours and visitors. I have fond memories of enjoying nature and many fruit trees.
You began your career as a freelance illustrator for the Trinidad Guardian. Can you describe the journey of your interest from childhood to bookbinding and Illustration?
Lauren: My interest in art began in my early teens. In secondary school I entered art competitions, and every-time I won, it gave me the encouragement to pursue Art.
I sold my first painting at 101 art gallery in my teens. I may have been about fifteen or sixteen years old when there was an opportunity to submit paintings to the gallery. I did a landscape painting that was based on a location where I lived (on the farm) and a fantasy painting. In the fantasy painting there were fairies somewhere in there. – It sold on the opening night.
Later, when I began drawing illustrations for the newspaper, I only had my secondary school art education at that point but I had these earlier experiences as well. I was always either drawing, painting or making things like Christmas cards that I sold or playing around with making handmade books as personal diaries from scraps of paper and card stock. So my interest was always there for bookmaking from early.
My tertiary education in art began at John Donaldson Technical Institute (UTT). I completed the graphic design and applied arts and bookbinding programmes there. But I was a freelance illustrator at the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian before I began those programmes. I was at the newspaper before and during the time I was studying art at tertiary level, this allowed me to get real life and class room experiences at the same time. At the newspapers, I did illustrations for articles and stories in The Zone and Sunshine magazines that appeared as separate newspaper publications in the Sunday Guardian paper.
After Wendell McShine (a senior artist) left, he handed over the job of doing the Wendy Rahamut Cook Up recipe page to me, this page appeared weekly on Friday. The environment was always busy and fast paced as you can imagine a newspaper would be since things have to be printed by a certain time. Working there was a good experience for me.
With Bookbinding — I’ve always loved books and being an avid reader in my teens I was fascinated by the book making process. When it was introduced to us at John D. when we had to develop our thesis: research, layout pages, print and bound it as a casebound book. I fell in love with bookbinding and I decided to continue making books after I completed my three year graphic design programme and enrolled in the two year bookbinding programme also offered at the school. It was something I was good at and I loved making them. I sold the handmade books at Scribbles (a craft store) and A Different View (a bookshop). My customers included people who wanted a handmade book (sketch book, journal, baby book, guest book) as a gift for someone or for themselves. Sometimes I did book repairs which was extra income alongside selling my books at the stores and being employed as a graphic designer.
Eventually, life got busy being employed as a full-time graphic designer. I wasn’t doing illustrations for the newspaper anymore, there were a lot of internal company changes at the newspaper and they didn’t have a need for illustrations. I also did less bookmaking and focused mainly on being a graphic designer, working over time at small design agencies and in-house with a corporate communication department. I returned to bookmaking during the pandemic and I sold my books locally and internationally directly to customers.
What drew you to creating comics as your method of creation and storytelling?
Lauren: I enjoyed reading different types of material and comics was one of them. I read a lot of Archie Comics, MAD magazines, various comic strips in the newspapers, DEW’s one panel gag comic that appeared in the Trinidad Guardian (a local cartoonist who passed away in 2004) and the photo romance magazines. These early readings exposed me to visual storytelling in a way an illustrated novel couldn’t and even though I was reading all types of books, comics was where I could see what was happening as I read it, fascinating! It was amazing to me and still is right now how much can be done with the comics medium. All of my interests were wrapped up into the comics making process and I wanted to learn more which led me to The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) in Vermont. Later, I pursued the Literatures in English degree (2019) at The University of the West Indies. So, everything had become full circle and I felt satisfied that I was doing something that encapsulated all of my interests. There are many things about comics I learnt through CCS, or on my own through experimentation and from the comics community. At CCS, the emphasis is on learning hands on how to develop a comic on your own from researching, writing, drawing and layout to the final printed mini comic. I learnt how to develop self-published comics and this has satisfied my interests. I also got to learn how to develop different types of comics (gag cartoons, comic strips etc) depending on the type of publication. I was also exposed to comics publishers on industry day, so the environment was about developing a cartoonist for both the self-published and traditionally published path. There are various aspects of comics making and it’s really about what someone wants to do and how far they want to go in the industry as a cartoonist.
What draws you to creating comics about teenage life?
Lauren: I create comics about preteens and teens which centre around various subject matters from both a Caribbean and universal perspective. I write about the way young people deal with these subject matters in a non judgmental way. It’s more about telling a story and comics is the medium I use to do that, I don’t think about why I write a particular story while I’m working on it. I don’t think about this when I’m writing and drawing a narrative comic. I have nine self-published mini comics that are shorter than the new body of work I’m currently developing which are two long form comics Jeremy and Sachelle that are both about pre-teens navigating life in different environments. Writing about teenage life just happened naturally as I never planned to create comics specifically for teens, I recognised over time in my writing that I was good at it and I kept writing and drawing my comics about teen life.
Where can we get your books?
Lauren: When I began developing my comics they were posted online on my website. Last year (2024) I began printing my comics and now my printed comics are sold online, from comics bookshops in the
US and at various comics events in the USA from Radiator Comics, a US distributor of mini comics, zines and small press comics. The nine titles that are being sold are: “Staying Friends”, “Waiting for my Sister”, “Detained”, “Safiya”, “Boy Days”, “Float”, “I Can Handle It”, Conrad and Not For Long (short story collection), and “The Quiet Family (Limited Edition only four copies).
You’re a Creative and a Mom. So am I.
How have you found the balance of being a professional Creative and a mom in the Caribbean?
Lauren: There have been many things written about motherhood and having a creative career. The side effect I think of it all is just feeling exhausted by the mental clock of all that needs to be done and managed in terms of scheduling and completing your professional work in a timeframe that maintains quality, professionalism and commitment to deadlines. Even though my son is in his early teens, and the scheduling doesn’t include diaper changes anymore, at this age there are more things to be done and you have to show up as a parent no matter what. My schedule changes at times and things don’t go as I would like it to and sometimes in the midst of working from a domestic space (my studio is in my home), there are moments where my concentration is interrupted. I have daily goals that I need to achieve and I balance my time carefully to meet my deadlines and goals as well as avoid burnout. I love what I do and being a creative mom, I know how important it is to create, make and finish the work that fills me up.
….
Art making in general is laborious, long and is mainly about experimenting, making mistakes, learning
from those mistakes and repeating the process again until you can arrive at your goal. It’s a life long
journey and the work gets better, changes and helps you develop into the artist you want to be. Most
of the things that have happened in my career was through me being open to trying new things,
following my interest and trusting myself enough to know that I can be successful at it. I think it’s
important to know yourself enough to decide what is best suited for you. It can be scary to develop
so much trust in oneself, it doesn’t happen overnight. I think it’s important for young artist to spend
some time just playing with different areas of interest before finalising on one thing. This can be
difficult to do if parents’ expectations are high for a trusted outcome. I would say to young artist, set
a timeframe that you can adhere to so you can work out your different interest and always leave
some room to play in your sketch book. I don’t know everything and I like that there is always room to learn more, this learning goes beyond finishing the formal art education.
INTERVIEWER: Tanya Marie | Imagery courtesy Lauren Hinds
