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I am a very creative person with a passion for design, photography, and music. I grew up in Hickory, N.C, then moved to Chapel Hill in 2012 to attend the University of North Carolina. I am now a Junior at UNC, majoring in journalism with a specialization in editing and graphic design and minoring in music. I am absolutely loving my years here at UNC, and enjoy every opportunity I get educationally and socially.

Coming to UNC, I had so many passions that it was hard for me to decide what I wanted to stick with. With a background of playing violin for 16 years, I came in as a music major, but quickly changed to journalism because of my passion for photography. I became a photojournalism major, but quickly realized that photography was more of a hobby rather than a career and I still yearned for a more creative outlet.

That’s when I realized my love for graphic design.

I am now a graphic design major and absolutely love it. It allows me to be creative, and even inte-grate my photography, and create flyers, t-shirts, and websites for organizations that I love.

I am involved in many organizations here at UNC. I am a member of Chi Omega Sorority, where we work together to raise money for the Make-A Wish-Foundation. I help organize our annual Pumpkin Patch, Dodge ball Tournament, and Princess Party, that all directly benefit children in the foundation. I am also a volunteer leader for Younglife, an organization that I have been involved with for over nine years. I mentor middle school students, organize and run events, and teach a weekly bible study, something that is very important to me.

I am an avid Cheerwine drinker and love North Carolina bluegrass music. You can find me spend-ing my summers in the Blue Ridge Mountains, hiking the Appalachain trail or pitching a tent by the campfire with my best friends. I spend my weekdays designing and my weekends explor-ing and adventuring Chapel Hill. I love to travel, and hope to one day take my passions of design and photography around the world. To start, this spring, I will be spending my entire semester in Florence, Italy, studying journalism at the Lorenzo de Medici Institute.

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Coming into college, I always

knew I wanted to do something

with design. When I started taking

graphic classes, I absolutely

fell in love with graphic design.

From that point forward, I knew

I wanted a career in it. Having

a major in Journalism with a

concentration in graphic design

and a minor in music, I always

have to be creative.

I believe that being both design minded and musically minded is something that sets me apart and helps me design differently from others.

When graduating from the University

of North Carolina, I would love

to find a job that allows me to

expresses that creativity through

design. I would love to find a

company or organization that I

am passionate about and design

graphics, flyers, or websites for them.

My first goal is to get an internship

with a national T-shirt company or

non-profit organization next summer.

Specifically, I would love to work

with Younglife, a global Christian

organization that I have been

involved with for over nine years.

My dream job would be designing

for them in Colorado or in another

country, like Africa.

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So when designing my visual identity, I knew I wanted to represent my name in some way. Hence, a bee theme. As you can see from my ideations, I jumped from the idea of honeycomb, to bee stripes, to the bee itself. I love the symmetry of my initials, so it worked out perfectly to incorporate my initials as the stripes of the bee. I wanted a more abstract bee, rather than a realistic one, so I went with congruent teardrop shapes.

I love simplicity, so I wanted to stick with grey, white, and yellow throughout my design. I took the bee’s wings, which formed an infinity sign, and used it to form a honeycomb shape on the back. The infinity sign represents me in so many ways - my infinite desire to design, travel, and experience new things.

I ended up loving the design so much, that I decided to base the design of my portfolio on it. The contrast of my black and white photography with the pop of yellow and simple shapes all represent some of my favorite designing techniques.

I love my last name.

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This project was an exploration into typography. The goals for this project were to

understand how to use type in the absence of imagery and present information in a

legible yet aesthetically pleasing format. The final result was 11 X 17in composition

that presents information about the font and designer that I chose to explore.

I thought it would be hard for me to decide which font I wanted to use, but as soon

as I saw the Storm Type font family, and the characters in the font, I was sold.

I immediately knew I wanted the focus of my design to be the face graphic in the

font. As seen in my ideations, I initially leaned toward a fairytale theme, with the

face being a moon character. However, it just didn’t seem dynamic enough for me.

I started thinking about other ways I could incorporate the moon idea and it came

to me – why settle for a moon in the sky when it is actually in the galaxy?

Once I settled on that idea, the rest was easy. I knew I wanted neon, translucent

colors to represent space and alien-like ideas. I also wanted to incorporate abstract

type into the design, so I ended up making a ‘milky way’ of letters around the

center.

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For my poster, I decided to do the James Alexander Low

Country Boil. I struggled with what part of the event to portray

in my design. As shown in my ideations, I first thought to focus

on the classic big pot and have the words spilling out, but I

wanted something more abstract and unexpected.

So then I started thinking about the idea of juxtaposition. I

thought about how low country boils are notorious for messy,

eat-your-food-off of newspapers, picnic table meals. How could

I juxtapose that idea? Make something fancy. So, I went with a

cursive font for the title of the event juxtaposed on top of the

classic newspapers on the picnic table.

Because my background was so abstract, I knew I needed a

crawfish in there somewhere to give the design some context.

Crawfish are known for their long antennas, so integrating them

with my cursive font worked perfectly. The bright red of the font

and crawfish contrast with the black and white newspaper and

give the design the depth and life it needed.

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For my flyer, I decided to do the annual dodge ball tournament. I

needed to keep consistency with my poster, so I decided to stick

with the idea of the juxtaposition of making something fancy that

isn’t normally.

So I started thinking, “if dodge ball was a fancy event, what would

it look like?” I immediately imagined a bunch of men in suave suits

nailing each other with dodge balls. That got my mind immediate-

ly thinking about only one thing – Bond. James Bond.

So I ran with it. After a few ideations playing with typography, I

decided to go with my original idea of men playing dodge ball

in suits, because it was such a perfect juxtaposition. It made me

laugh after I designed the graphic of the man holding the dodge

ball – it was just the perfect mash-up of two things that shouldn’t

go together. I ended up with a movie poster design inspired by

Skyfall with the smokey background and dark colors.

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The Carolina Visitor’s Center offered the opportunity to re-design the brochure for their First Look program. First Look is a program that introduces middle school students to the idea of college. Part of this program includes a tour of UNC’s campus, which is what the brochure is used for.

I knew going into this project that the most important aspect would be to make sure my brochure was designed with middle school students in mind. I thought about how I could make a brochure be interactive and engaging for the kids looking at it. So, I decided to go with a game theme – like a scavenger hunt through campus.

I initially thought about doing a straight forward approach on the game theme and have a spin wheel on the cover. Like all of my designs before it, I ended up wanted a more abstract approach. So I went with square shapes to represent checkers, or board game boards. I also stuck with the interactive idea on the back by providing a bingo board. With this, the kids can be engaged with looking at the campus and learning, in a kid-friendly way.

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