Designers in the Making

When I was little, I was always wrapped up in creating my own characters and comics. I would intently watch Nicktoons and try to recreate the characters on paper, and even draw new characters I’d imagine in some of my favorite shows. When I was around 7 or 8, me and a neighborhood friend tried to create our own version of what children thought was a comic business. We’d shut ourselves in an old treehouse, tirelessly working on characters and storylines, pretend that we were drinking coffee, and chat about how we could try to sell our stories at garage sales.

As a kid, I was always doing something creative in my free time. A frequent activity of mine was searching through my family’s craft cupboard, a mix of every art tool and scraps of paper you could imagine, listening to music and collaging for hours. It’s almost like a puzzle where you creatively solve how all these pieces fit together — and I still love to do it today.

My mom says she always knew I’d end up in a creative field because as a kid I never followed the directions when I played with things like LEGO, Play-Doh, and Lincoln Logs. I also loved building in video games (I still do) and I started drawing annual Christmas cards for my family when I was nine so I like to think that product design is a nice blend of my creative joys as a kid.