My path to design hasn’t been a direct one, but my varied personal and professional experiences inform my work and give me direction.
My love of illustration, my care for other humans, and my desire to leave any place I go a little better than I found it are all lessons from my early life that I bring to my design practice today. My father is a fine woodworker, naturalist, and environmental activist, and my mother is a physical therapist. I grew up in rural northern California in a little hippie artist town, going back and forth between their two homes. From my parents, I learned the importance of caring for people who are hurting and caring for the water and trees and animals we lived alongside. I also learned how to be flexible–maybe a little too flexible sometimes–and to listen and adapt quickly to change. I was a creative kid and was lucky to grow up surrounded by creative adults, from my dad’s woodworker friends to encouraging teachers to painters and printmakers. I was encouraged to draw, and I did that a lot growing up, especially during the summer when I would go with my dad to the Alaskan bush for a month or more at a time for his work. I kept an illustrated journal there to help me remember the plants and scenery I saw when we were out hiking. This instilled in me a desire to draw and write in a way that was not just pretty but also accurate and informational. I never felt like much of an “artist” for this reason, but looking back on it now, I can see the seeds of my interest in graphic design.
When I first came out as queer and trans to friends and family, I was recently divorced and living far from my hometown. My workplace wasn’t a safe space for me to be out. I found refuge in my off hours through volunteering in LGBTQ+ community. I’ve been a volunteer at Lambert House, an LGBTQ+ youth center here in Seattle, since 2016. My experiences as a drop-in center volunteer had a huge impact on me I got to witness the youth building connections with one another and supporting each other through all of the things they were going through,including the average teen challenges of navigating relationships or the less average (but sadly still not uncommon) experience of familial rejection or homelessness. I got to share little moments with them, like learning how to put on a chest binder for the first time and watching them dye their hair. It sounds pretty cheesy, but they taught me way more than I ever taught them. In particular, the experience of connecting with queer and trans people much younger and much older (the staff and some of the other volunteers) than me helped me feel rooted in my own community’s history and gave me a sense of connection and hope for the future. Seeing how vital and life-saving something as simple as an old house with some comfy couches, art supplies, and an army of volunteers convinced me that I wanted my work to be in service of something like that.
I was eventually able to take a position at a more affirming workplace when I started working at Pride Foundation in 2018. At that job, I really started to see how my love of illustration and design could intersect with community-building work. My work at Pride Foundation focused initially on event planning and written communications, but I had a hunch that I could do more, so I started asking for small design projects. They were well received and led to more, some of which were, in retrospect, far bigger and more complex than I had the skill for at the time. My proudest moment was when our “Community Care Package,” a printed year-end fundraising piece I designed and laid out in Illustrator and InDesign went out to hundreds of our supporters at the end of 2020–and people not only wrote back to us to tell us how much it meant to them, but mentioned it specifically when they made donations to our organization. It felt good to know that people liked my designs and illustrations, but even more than that, it hit me hard to think that something I made gave people a sense of community and even inspired them to give. My design translated into concrete support for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities across the Northwest. Sure, I hadn’t used global swatches and had to go back and recolor every little piece of every flower vector illustration individually before we could publish the digital version. And sure, I didn’t know anything about color theory or kerning. There are things I would do differently now, after just one quarter at SCCA. But I think this experience taught me that there is a massive need for design and effective communication outside of the corporate sector.If anything, I am more proud now of the Community Care Package and my other design efforts than I was in the moment.
I decided to drop everything and return to school because of these experiences. I’m here to build a more robust professional toolkit so that I can take those tools back to my community in some way. I’m not sure where my path after school will lead, but it’s been interesting and helpful to hear from guest speakers who incorporate their own identity, social justice, and activism into their practice. When I feel overwhelmed or frustrated, I think about their work, and the impact my work has already had, and it gets me excited for all of the new possibilities ahead.