Narrative illustrator and multi-purpose image maker.
Sci-fi and fantasy lover with a sweet tooth.
Born and bred in East London, I have recently completed my degree in graphic design and illustration at the London College of Communication.
Feel free to email me or ask me questions. You can also check out my official portfolio at lisadagz.com or check out what I got up to on my placement year during 2011/12 on my class's blog.
But you can’t see what I’ve actually been doing for it because that would just spoil the surprise, wouldn’t it? Stay tuned to see my illustration published online in December. :)
Why do I call myself LisaDagz instead of just sticking with Lisa Grant? (Apart from the fact that ‘Lisa Grant’ isn’t a particularly exciting and intriguing title.)
When I was younger, my age only just about in double digits, I loved making stories. If there was no paper and pencils I’d just make up stories in my head. One was a young girl’s fantasy of being a princess who got rescued by a handsome… well, actually, it was a fantasy of being a kick-ass kid in a gang who were all named after different kinds of blades. There was a big fat guy called Axe, a mysterious guy called Katana, you get the picture. Being little as I was (even in this fantasy) I decided I was to be Daggers.
BUT THAT’S NOT THE WHOLE STORY.
Aaaaanyway. A few months after I’d come up with this little story for myself, I started getting into divination. Palmistry, horoscopes, dream reading, that sort of thing. I liked superstitions and symbolism, it all appealed to my love of stories.
I had books, many many books, on the occult. One was on runes. Mmm, symbols. Waitaminute, this one’s called Dagaz. Heh, sort of sounds like Daggers. “This rune symbolises transformation, day and the new dawn, a positive breakthrough.”
It was some kind of spooky epiphany. I’d been reading too many books on superstition, it seemed too weird to me at the time for it to be a coincidence. Dagaz was the name of the awesome girl I wanted to transform into. It was the new dawn for me, a positive breakthrough.
To clarify, I was about 11 years old at the time, but a decade later I still feel excited by the memory of thinking I’d just been given some sort of sign. I adopted the name Dag’z, for short, as a sort of amalgamation of Dagaz and Daggers. I attempted to get my friends to call me it as some sort of cool nickname, but it didn’t catch on. (I wasn’t cool enough for a cool nickname.)
Instead, I started using it for internet anonymity, although I had to drop the apostrophe because the internet didn’t like punctuation. Before I knew it, I was known everywhere as LisaDagz. Wow, I wasn’t even trying that time.
And there you have it. That’s why I’m called LisaDagz, and that’s why that weird triangular rune sometimes floats above my name. I guess I’m still a little superstitious.
