Real. World. Design.

This past weekend I had a great opportunity to be a featured designer at the Real World Design Conference at my alma mater, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. It’s an annual event put on by the dedicated and wonderful AIGA – UWSP chapter. It was so much fun and they wore us out! I was honored to be one of the five featured designers, along with Courtney Lancour, Tom Wilz, Michael Johnson, and Amanda Chavez.

As part of the conference, we got to review student portfolios (so much fun!) and give a presentation on what we’ve been up to post grade.
Portfolio Reviews: The portfolio reviews went great! There is some awesome talent coming out of UWSP this year and I look forward to seeing the student’s develop in the upcoming months, and for the younger students, years. I hope I was a great mentor for all the students and I hope to continue to be a resource for them! Being a portfolio reviewers was such an enlightening experience, I felt it was important to share their projects’ strengths as well as constructive things to think about. The time went by so fast with each student, and many of them had such great work we could talk all day. Great job to all the students I got to talk with (Lanea Zagrzebski, Adam Hintze, Emily Sikora, Alex Weinfurter, Dana Vanden Boogart, Sarah Rieder + the rest of the AIGA board)! They showed some great conceptual work in packaging, brochures, digital media, and even some brave sophomores with letterform projects. Please stay in touch and feel free to contact me with any questions at all! (:

The Presentations: It was so much fun getting to listen to the other Alumni speak. All of us shared our own perspective and life experiences since graduation, as well as tips for students and a creative body of work. I hope the students learned a lot, I know I did! I haven’t been out of school that long, but how do you crunch so much into 20 minutes?! Well, I failed at that, haha. I guess I had a lot to say, and that’s even after trimming my slides down. There was so much I wanted to cover and advice to give the students… And I forgot/ran out of time to mention half of them. I know that all the students are in great places to enter the design world, whether they believe it or not. The most important thing is knowing who you are and believing in yourself. Everything falls into place as it should and best wishes for the fun journey ahead!

PHOTO CREDIT: UWSP AIGA Board