I grew up in the winds of a small coastal southern Oregon town. My mother is also an artist, so I was surrounded by supplies, encouragement, and support for whatever craft caught my attention. I first fell in love with layout back in high school yearbook (yes, really), finding great satisfaction in fitting the puzzle pieces of text and photographs within the confines of margins and eyelines while maintaining a clear narrative. 

 

After a semester at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA as a science major, I changed plans and graduated with a B.A. in Communication (Public Relations emphasis). My junior year, I studied abroad in Nantes, France and with the extra credits, bumped a French minor into a second major. 

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I remained in the Puget Sound region and found myself at a wholesale framed art company. There, my latent love of design and layout re-awoke. My skills come from a combination of lifelong passion, self-teaching, and on-the-job training. When there's something I want to learn, I head at it full force. For example: I taught myself Adobe Illustrator in order to design the invitation for my own wedding (because wedding planning always lacks a certain amount of stress?). In 2014, I enrolled in the Graphic Design Certificate program at Bellevue college to fill in some of the natural gaps that came from my entrance to the profession and completed it in 2018.