Every designer has their story of how they got started. Sometimes their self-discovery starts at a young age, and others discover their passion later in life. There’s no timeline or age limit on creativity, especially when there are so many areas of practice in design, and technology continues to evolve. I first discovered the world of design when I was in high school. Like some designers, I was a part of my school’s publications department and was the yearbook editor-in-chief, but surprisingly that is not where my journey into design began.
How It All Began... I was a freshman in high school taking a Business Information Management (BIM) class as a technology credit, and that was by far my favorite class of the day. I enjoyed it so much that I went through the curriculum faster than the teacher had anticipated. Miss O’Brien realized that I needed something to work on, so she introduced me to the Adobe Creative Suite. It started with basic self-guided exercises of how to use the pen tool and creating a clipping mask. She then let me know about all the classes at the school that I could take. I took every class she had to offer from Graphic Design, Illustration, Web Design and Animation. Come time to apply for college, I had no idea what to major in, but Miss O’Brien started sharing various graphic design programs for me to look into. That’s when I found Texas State University’s Communication Design program.
What I've Been Up To... The past four years I have had the pleasure of being a part of a design program that has both challenged me and encouraged me to create designs that had intention and meaning. It is here that I found my identity of who I wanted to be as a designer. I identify as a multidisciplinary designer because I fell in love with creating brand identities that also translated into a digital experience that was both easy to interact with, but also visually appealing. Knowing what is effective in the digital space and why it is effective piqued my interest into the field of design research. It is here that I decided that I wanted to pursue my M.S. in Marketing Research and Analysis to understand who I’m designing for and how I can reach them better.
My New Journey Into Blogging... All that being said, I wanted to start writing about my personal journey and experiences in the world of design and marketing and to share my insight on how those two intersect. If you’re a digital marketer looking for ways to inspire your creativity, a designer looking to improve your user’s experience, or even a young designer/digital marketer trying to find your way in the field, I hope that my posts can help provide some insight or advice from my journey. As a recently graduated design student, new marketing graduate student, and a young designer in agency life, there is still so much that I have to learn, but some of the best lessons are the ones you learn along the way.
I hope to have some of you follow along with my journey and that I might learn something new from you all. If there’s one thing that I’ve always learned in my journey so far it is to keep learning something new each day. Whether it’s learning a new recipe or discovering a new strategy of doing things, always keep an open mind to the things you have yet to discover.