The Long Story
Before you begin reading about the exhaustive history (ha ha!) of this site, I’ll let you know that I can’t tell a quick story. They always run on way too long. I’m not at all offended if you don’t want to read paragraphs of text online (I don’t usually). If you’re looking for “succinct”, you’re more than welcome to skip over to my portfolio.
Long of It
It all started with finger paints (I wonder if for anyone else it did not start with finger paints – or at least somewhere down the line?) I remember getting so frustrated because there was no good way to mix the colors (red, blue, yellow, and green) without mucking up the paint containers. The yellow would be bluish and the green an ugly brown, and all the while my little OCD brain just couldn’t take it. These days, I find myself sitting in front of Photoshop, sorting color swatches and sketches into a polished design. And no matter what I’m doing, my childhood obsession with organization comes into play – encouraging me to create that which is intrinsically clean and logical, despite the medium or the inspiration. Order in chaos, right? I just think back to my old paintings, primitive and frenetic in nature, knowing that they were all based on what was quite possibly an unhealthy level of organization for a 4 year old. I see it now as the basis for why I am madly in love with my work, and am eager to perpetually improve the way in which I approach design.
Aside from the aforementioned love of the design process, I bring to the table over 14 years of web experience. Educated a programmer in college, I found myself falling for design over the coding – it was as if I viewed programming as a means by which a particular visual statement might be expressed. I still firmly believe that the world is full of developers but short on designers. As such, I spent the rest of my time behind a camera or a paint brush, constantly calling upon my studies of fine arts and new media. My education afforded me positions at the Department of State and the Foreign Service Institute, along with contracts for several think tanks in the District, Film Companies, Clinics, Commercial and Non-Profit Organizations, on both the east and west coast. My work has been seen on both CNN and Nightline.
I currently serve as the Director for Web-Based Communications at The City College of New York. In addition to maintaining the campus site and content management system, I have been responsible for the full design, layout and creation of the templates that hold our 40,000+ page web site. I regularly meet with faculty and staff, providing instruction on maintaining their own sites – we currently have over 200 web editors working on the CMS.
In my free time, I enjoy such design-related pursuits as cooking, painting, and photography (I’ve been known to make jewelry as well). I like to take out my aggression on the tennis court, and if time allows, in some exotic location. And I will talk your ear off about movies, music and art, old and current. My husband and I currently take up residence in NYC, but you can quite often find us mucking around my hometown of Arlington, VA (or as I like to call it, “The Land of my Ancestors”).