As a first-year graduate student new to graphic design, I have been adjusting my creative processes. I have been striving to integrate moments of inspiration for concept with methodical and responsive fine-tuning of form and emotion.

As a graphic designer, I consider myself to be an artist, a writer, a communicator, an educator, an organizer, a thought-provoker, and a citizen. I find great freedom in the ability to choose any media, format, and concept that I believe can best convey idea or information.

I care deeply about environments, our human relationships with them, and our responsibility to them. As a painter, I manifest these values in representations of personal experiences of place. As a graphic designer, I aim to address these values in the public realm rather than the private. Because graphic design is visual communication, the exchange with the viewer/receiver is paramount.

I am beginning to develop my visual voice for environmental change. While shock value has its place and its purpose for this end, it is not my voice. I don’t want to get in people’s faces; I want to get in their heads. I maintain that there is something to be gained by being provocative in a respectful manner rather than a confrontational one. I am finding that tone of voice — both verbal and visual — becomes critical to this end.

I am interested in creating experiences of discovery in which meaning unfolds and deepens. My intention in doing so is to engage people as active receivers rather than passive viewers. I am discovering the importance of hierarchy — and therefore scale, contrast, sequence, and composition — in facilitating such involvement.