writings

discovery

9/24/26

One thing me and my loved ones can agree on is that I can never just focus on one thing. I’m always doing a million different things that interest me which can be a blessing and a curse. I’ve always been interested in working with my hands. I blame it on my want to be a fashion designer just like Clawdeen Wolf and the Bratz when I was 7. I wouldn’t leave my mom alone while she would sew, so she taught me how. My interest in all things creative deepened further when I was 11 years old and took up an interest in the animation process, the idea of helping a world come to life was intriguing to me. Since then I’ve kept drawing as a hobby, and adopted a ton of others along the way. Present day I am studying Graphic Design because it opens up many different avenues for me. No matter what my future career might be, I want it to be helpful to someone or something. Currently, I would like to transfer to study Industrial Design.

After asking my loved ones for an outside perspective, I was told my strength is with detail oriented work, and while I do good independent designs, I also work well in a team setting or when given a set of guidelines. My weakness lies within time management, I tend to worry about details being up to standard, and have a slow design process. The anxiety of putting my designs out there has also prevented me from using social media. My unique selling point is my drive to teach myself new things, and ability to understand target audiences. During the design center courses, it was fulfilling for me to put my skills to use and I am lucky to have acclaim from that class and something I could show my family and friends. I am also lucky to have found success after the design center courses. I had actually taken a year break from my education after thinking I was not good enough compared to others, but after finding my work on the wall as decoration at a musueum exhibit, it gave me the determination I needed. While I am not a genius, thinking about my accomplishments keeps me going.

While I’m not a very competitive person, I do recognize there is competition. There are many talented designers not only in this class, but around the world. Sometimes the competition isn’t even a person these days, more than ever designers need to apply the human reasoning behind their work to stand out. While it can be intimidating to be surrounded by a lot of talent, it's important to remember that some of the best artists in history have learned from healthy competitions and critiques from their friends/peers. Everyone's goals and way of communication with design is different, so people will succeed in different ways.

A lot of the artists I look up to often have a personal website to be their own creative outlet and then a separate more traditional portfolio website. Oftentimes a creative landing page will unfortunately make a page be lower in the search results, so creating a second traditional website will create more site traffic. I’m very interested in old styles of web design, so this will more than likely be something I do in the future too.

My intended audience for my professional design work would hopefully be geared towards entities like non-profits, state parks, local museums, and AZA zoos for awareness/conservation effort designs. One day I would like to create accessible promotional/educational materials, and exhibit designs. These would need to be enjoyed for families and a very diverse crowd. As for my personal work, I focus on diverse takes for biology, fashion, toy design, and the creepy cute style. The intended audience for my personal work are people who enjoy escapism or stories focused on women that are still somewhat rooted in reality. When people look at my personal work I want them to feel like they could fit into a fantasy world too. It is important to me that my world stays hopeful, because the real world can be cruel.