You could say the medical profession is in Alexandra Proba’s blood: both of her parents and her brother work in the field. So when it came time for the native of Lüdenscheid, Germany, to choose a career path after high school, dentistry seemed like a natural choice. She looked to be on her way when she was admitted to a medical college in 2005. “My dad was like, ‘Oh my God, you got accepted!’” she recalls. “And I was like, no way – I just can’t do it.”
Proba’s dream was to become a visual artist. Although it can be hard to earn a comfortable living in the arts, she applied to Akademie Mode & Design school in Hamburg – and got in. “I waited until everything was set and then told my parents when there was no way out anymore,” she says with a laugh. “It felt rebellious, even though I didn’t plan for it to be.”
To better her chances at a stable career, Proba took on a multidisciplinary course load that covered architecture, construction, and product and graphic design. After graduation, she moved to New York City and worked as a product and web designer for startups such as General Assembly and Kickstarter. The 29-year-old Brooklynite is now a design director at Mother New York, a digital agency in Manhattan.
While her job was challenging and fulfilling, Proba still had plenty of ideas and energy left in her reservoir. In June 2013 she founded Studio Proba, a creative agency that she runs in the evenings and on weekends. The backbone of this side hustle has been her A Poster a Day project, in which she creates one piece of digital art every day. She sells the works through Studio Proba’s online store.
A Poster a Day began as an exercise to help Proba overcome her artistic fears. “I wanted to see what I could do in 30 minutes every day and what would happen if I posted it to the world,” she says. “Would I be OK? Would I have a heart attack? Would I delete it right away?”
The daily routine proved to be liberating. “At one point I realized that perfection doesn’t have to happen every day,” Proba says. “This project made me be OK with being OK. I learned how to remove myself from my work sometimes, which really helped me professionally and as a person.”
By day 200 of the project, A Poster a Day had attracted a strong online following. That pushed Proba to keep creating, never missing a post even when she was on vacation. Proba’s friend Caroline Lau recalls how they were traveling together in Mallorca, Spain, in 2014 and couldn’t go to sleep until a poster was published. “It was pretty cool to witness that creative process and see how the travels we experienced together translated visually,” says Lau.
“When she has an idea in her head, she just goes straight for it,” says Laura Grieser, one of Proba’s former colleagues. “She’s a little bit stubborn, but in a good way.”
In year 2 of A Poster a Day, Proba collaborated with her audience, allowing readers to submit personal stories that she then illustrated. Now in year 3, readers email questions that Proba answers through her artwork. The process continues, night in and night out. Despite a demanding job and other obligations, she always finds time for her side hustle.
“Alex is one of the few people I know who seems to find more than 24 hours in a day,” says Lau. “What’s always inspired me is how she’s able to weave her creative pursuits into all parts of her life. That speaks to her as a creative force and how she’s able to stretch the day more than anyone else can.”
“A Poster a Day has become a habit, like brushing my teeth,” says Proba. “Which is funny, because it connects me back to my starting point in dentistry. It’s really abstract, but it’s really funny for me in my weird mind.”
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