A short autobiography
I grew up mostly in Southern California, but I currently go to school at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, located in the beautiful Central Coast. When I'm not designing, I love exploring the outdoors by going on hikes, camping trips, running, and traveling. I can also be quite the homebody and enjoy reading, video gaming, cooking, crafting, and watching movies. I spend a lot of time with my family, boyfriend, and close friends, and they all inspire me and make my life truly enjoyable.
How I became a designer
Throughout my childhood, I had always been the artsy type. My mom encouraged me to express my creative side through arts and crafts ever since I was a toddler, and my dad had me operating an IBM PC when I was in kindergarten. Consequently, I have had a love for computers and making art for as long as I can remember. I started experimenting with HTML when I was in middle school, and spent many, many hours making myself and others LiveJournal templates in high school (back when LiveJournal was very popular). I never had access to Adobe Creative Suite software, but I harnessed the power of Microsoft Paint and made it work for me.
In high school, I was very unsure of the direction I wanted to take in life because I seemed to do very well in my math classes (I took AP Calculus and passed the AP Exam), but wanted a job where I could take advantage of my creative side. I never really considered the option of making a career out of my creative hobbies until I took the yearbook class my senior year of high school. The amount of enjoyment I got out of designing layouts for yearbook pages inspired my decision to major in Graphic Communication at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I have thoroughly enjoyed the courses I have taken in college, and every day I become more and more confident that I have found my calling. It seems that my appreciation of math and my strong technical side has given me a very careful, detail-oriented eye that I believe shows in all of my design work.
What I can do for you
I have tried my hand at just about everything the world of design has to offer, and I enjoy all of it. However, there are certain areas I am more focused on and have specialized in:
- Web Design
- Graphic Design
- Branding
- Layout Design
I love web design. It has lately been the area that I have been studying the most, because I totally enjoy it and it allows me to indulge my technical and creative side through creating an attractive user interface by writing XHTML markup and CSS style sheets. My current goal is to learn to write my own JavaScript, and that will start as soon as the book I ordered arrives at my doorstep.
This is the all-encompassing area that I have the most experience in. My current job has me designing multiple posters, signs, and banners every week. It has been incredible to see how much my designs have matured over the past four years. I also do a lot of freelance graphic design aside from my jobs and school work, including t-shirt graphics, album art, and surfboard art.
Branding, or logo creation, is a very different mindset from any other area of design. It involves a lot of research, abstract thinking, and making sure the final product is multipurpose. I have a lot of appreciation for a well-designed logo, which is very important for the success of any business. I have created brand identies for classmates, non-profit organizations, and a web site for the city of Nipomo.
To me, layout design is like putting together pieces of a puzzle. I worked for the Mustang Daily, Cal Poly's student-run daily newspaper, as the sports section designer for one year during my junior year of college, and every night I was provided with different stories and pictures to arrange on the sports pages. I also made graphics that enhanced the stories. Layout design is about finding the best, most appealing way to display content for any kind of media.