Suburbs of Chicago, IL, USA
This is a view from the One North office (We now work from home, this pic is from 2019)
I have always been a creative person and loved any outlet to use imagination and be inventive. During high school I discovered Photoshop and realized that I could make a career out of design. In college, I was very intrigued by packaging design and loved reverse engineering different packaging patterns in my head before taking them apart.
Once out of college though, I was lucky enough to choose between the “print or digital” team at a small agency, and because I love a challenge, the digital team would provide that. From there I have had great mentors and roles in both UX & UI design at agencies and in-house.
Design Systems! I joined to learn best practices, see how others are working on their design systems, and network with other designers in other parts of the country/world.
It’s a great experience! The teachers have fantastic energy and the small group class atmosphere was ideal. I wish the class was longer, as I know there is so much more to learn and everyone in the class was great to spin ideas off of.
The people, learning about great desktop apps to try out, proper design token naming, and being around fellow designers in other parts of the globe with different backgrounds!
I am not a morning person 😴... so I usually role out of bed 🛌 twenty minutes before work begins.
My day is filled with messages 💬, meetings 🗣️, coffee ☕, cats walking on my desk 🐈 🐈, and tending to my plants 🪴. Favorite parts of my work day include learning new things 📘, mentoring 📓, and doing some crazy Figma prototype animations 💻📱.
To wrap up the day on Tuesdays/Thursdays 📆, I jump on Zoom 🖥️ for our 4pm Design Systems bootcamp 🧑🏻🏫. We learned things like shortcuts ⏩, proper token naming 🪙, variant naming, tips on organizing 🧹your design system, etc.
After buying my first place in November 2020, the first room I tackled was my office! We spend so much time working, so after too many hours at my kitchen table... it was a must!
I’m currently filling up the space with plants and artwork. Some of the artwork is from friends and people I admire.
The desk is a huge DIY piece that I put together using 2 Ikea countertops and 3 Room & Board cabinets.
You can spot two of Ziggy’s favorite toys in this pic of my office... The mouse and lava rocks from the fiddle leaf fig 🙈
Also, the reason there are so many plants in my office (other than loving them) is because many are toxic to pets, so when I’m not working the office is “closed for business”.
💻 Gif Brewery, Rocket, Contrast
📱Planta, Target, Tiktok
This feels so silly, but I can’t help but to mention the Simplehuman brand, particularly the trash can new user/on-boarding experience. They are intuitively designed and come with a starter set of trash bags and they sit in a compartment that make it easy to pull through and replace. It’s the smallest addition but super smart because when you get down to 4 bags left, they have a tag attached to the bag you pull through that lets you know you are running low and gives you a promo code to re-order.
Lo-fi space or coffee shop music, singer/songwriter music in languages I don’t know (Current favorite: AnnenMayKantereit Youtube), or design leadership podcasts (Like Stephen Gates The Crazy Ones Youtube)
