Awesome Socks Club’s April 2026 Artist: Julianne Griepp

ASC’s April Artist is a surreal, snazzy, slick, super-talented illustrator—we’d bet on it!

This month at Awesome Socks Club, we’re thrilled to showcase Julianne Griepp (she/her) as our featured designer! Julianne is a freelance illustrator based in Wisconsin who brings a distinctly sleek, slightly mischievous energy to everything she makes, like something you’d catch glinting out of the corner of your eye and then spend the rest of the day thinking about. She also might be keeping a member of Star Trek in her basement. We’re very into all of it, and we think you will be too.

An Interview With Awesome Socks Club's April Artist

In a sentence, how would you describe your work? 

I would describe it as dreamy, nostalgic, and a little bit eclectic.

Do you have any favorite themes you enjoy working with? 

I love exploring imagery that’s really surreal, kitschy or fantastical. My dreams are vivid and they inspire a lot of my work. I also love retro illustration and older tv shows, and I think that comes through in a lot of my pieces.

What mediums do you like to work in? 

I mostly work digitally, using an iPad with Procreate. But I also love working with pencil, acrylic, watercolor, collage, papier-mache—whatever I can get my hands on.

As an artist, are there any tools that you would perish if you left the house without them? 

I used to carry a sketchbook everywhere I went. Nowadays I don’t enjoy drawing on the go as much, but I always have my phone and take a million pictures to reference later.

If you were an environmental storytelling skeleton, how do you think you'd be found?

Hanging upside down from a telephone wire. I have the worst luck.

Do you have a dream project you'd like to work on someday?

I would love to do album or merch art for an artist I like. 

What is the strangest/goofiest (PG) fact about yourself that you're comfortable sharing?

I have a life-size cardboard cutout of Spock in my basement. I keep accidentally jumpscaring the maintenance guys by forgetting to tell them he’s down there. 

What drew you to the imagery of your design? 

Lately, I’ve been really into those detailed Victorian ornamental illustrations. I saw a piece with my design inspiration surrounded by swirly nature motifs and felt compelled by it, so I wanted to translate that idea into a more modern design. I also love to listen to music while I ideate, and at the time I was listening to Mitski who has a lot of similar imagery in her songs.

Can you talk a little about your design process? Where do you draw your inspiration from, and how do you workshop your design from draft to final? 

I try to draw inspiration from a lot of different places- music, fashion, design, tv shows, photography– whatever I’m into in that moment. For this piece I wanted to create a design that I myself would like to wear. I started by putting in my headphones and doodling as many ideas as would come to me (I counted about 40 sock doodles in my sketchbook!). These preliminary doodles are pretty illegible, so I then refined them into 3 detailed sketches to choose from. We ended up going with the dog design, which I finished digitally in Procreate.

Do you have a favorite feature of the sock design?

I really love how the abstract swirlies came out. I was referencing tattoo designs and Y2K style shape language, and I think they have a cool feeling to them.

What’s your preference: Ankle or crew socks?

Crew for sure!