My design career started at my mother’s breakfast table. I had stopped eating my bowl of (insert 80’s sugar cereal brand here), was holding my spoon in my right hand, wiping my left hand on my corduroys, blowing the loose strands of a bowl haircut away as I stared at the back of the cereal box. There was a game. Something about leaping over a series of steps to get to the end of a path. Usual barriers and shenanigans, like a colorful gorilla that needed to be side stepped and bridges that transversed deep caverns. I don’t remember it exactly because I was focused on the layout, color palette, typographic hierarchy and similar elements of design. Except I wasn’t exactly, because I was nine years old. I remember thinking to myself “Someone created this.” Not the art specifically although that was part of it. The whole packaging, paper choice, art style, headline language, game theory, legal text, etc. I didn’t know any of these words or that there were teams of people behind it all. Or any of the design principles, behavioral economics or print production of it all. But I did sense there was a hidden world behind it and I was obsessed with that idea.
Nine years later I entered into design school and had made a choice to do graphic design. It wasn’t called that of course back then, but I knew that I wanted to dig into production, I wanted to understand the reasons humans made the choices they did, and fundamentally “the why” of everything. I did get my degree in graphic design, which is my first love of design, but I was also lucky to have professors that talked about design thinking before that was a wide-spread thing. Fortunately for me I received an invisible dual degree in design & design thinking, both sharing human-centered methodologies at their core.
After graduating, I spent the next 30 years looking for a wide-range of design experiences. I went from designing for print to the early days of the internet, to designing for tv commercials, to entire digital ecosystems, products both physical and digital, with innovation work threaded throughout the years. I’ve worked at too many agencies and design firms to count. Owned 2 businesses. Was fired. Annoraked through both a dotcom crash and a global pandemic. Had numerous bosses. I’ve worked in almost every industry on projects both small and for entire digital ecosystems. All the time seeking out “the why”. For me I always want to know the source. I’m the person that asks a lot of questions in the room. I’m endlessly fascinated by what’s at the core.
And to be able to effectively do what I wanted I had to climb the design industry food chain, work on larger projects that encompass more and more. I got married and had 3 daughters so life happened & I wanted to make as much money as possible to support them. I’ve been lucky and have gained a ton of experience. And with those experiences I’ve met so many creative, passionate, intelligent designers. I truly believe that designers can change the world. Why you may ask? Because we’re good at change. At the core of every brief, project or redesign is a shift. We seek out ideas and concepts that have never existed before. We dive into what if, from one way of doing things to another. Some of us have cheat codes already preloaded that help with new ideas, but the reality is most creative designers have just built the mental muscles over time to think differently. We approach things from a new perspective. Always. And I’m happy to have made a life of, practiced in, and benefited from design for so many years.