Inspired by James Bond in fifth grade I did my first comic book. I had to infiltrate the nefarious organization, PLOKKK’s secret headquarters. They were holed up on a small island with palm trees and armed with a WWII German tank, their logo splashed on the side. Looking back, I struggle to piece together the Venn diagram of common interests that united members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization with the folks from the Ku Kluk Klan to form a super group. In ninth grade I drew a map of South America for Mr. Parks’ world history class with a photorealistic image of Simon Bolivar inset (side note: I grew up in Venezuela where his face was on the currency though I had moved to Houston by this point.) For my next class project, I built the Tower of London out of balsa wood, crenellation across the top, with drawn detailing across the sturdy paper walls doing the noble job of housing fancy political prisoners.

My first professional-feeling job doing typography was my senior year in high school (Massachusetts) when a member of the yearbook staff told me they wanted me to draw them a headline bigger than their tools allowed. The sports section needed ‘fall’ and 'winter’ across a spread which I rendered in an elegant serif face vaguely inspired by Vogue. The editor found the difference in word width on the spread awkward and suggested I add a fish to either side of ‘Fall’ to balance it. Of course I gave him fish.

Little did I know that 5 years later – after beginning my long period of night classes to recover from an economics degree – I would have my first paying job as a designer at a magazine I had subscribed to as a child, Games; despite all my years going to museums with the family and surrounded by art books at home, it was late that I discovered one could be an artist and have a day job. Sometime the first week there I asked the guy joining me in the elevator about where to eat lunch. Turns out, this was the editor (my boss’ boss!!), the Will Shortz from the New York Times Crossword and NPR fame. I spent the entire lunch as a participant in a usability test as he trialed his latest puzzle ideas on me. This led to my next job at a magazine my mom subscribed to, Town and Country, then Parenting, Shape and so on until I was in charge of directing the design of a start up magazine. Each stop meant learning about new audiences and how to reach them with branding and a design system.

My tenure at Oregon Food Bank broadened my skills by working on things as varied as implementing a rebranding across the entire organization and designing our biggest fundraiser, an event with months of lead time, producing a suite of graphics to choreograph the flow of guests for both festivity and alignment with our mission. Just as importantly, I learned how nice it is to feel I was making a difference for our community with my work. If I have a passion, it would be to apply my skills to encourage sustainability somehow.

Losing that job happened because the organization embarked upon a digital-first strategy. I’ve taken it as a sign that the time is right for me to reenter the digital after some long-ago ventures into Flash, HTML and Dreamweaver. After so many years of working to make things ‘pretty’, I love the aspect of UX that is functional: testing offers an external measure of success rather than subjective taste. And it appeals to my yen for problem solving, whether it be crosswords or redesigning the worst kitchen in the world with users in mind (originally a t-shaped layout with three entries, plus a refrigerator and a chimney chase jutting into the space!)