How did you get into web design?
My mom was an art teacher and my dad was a computer engineer, so growing up I was influenced by both art and computers. I ended up at art school and realized that my primary interest lay in computer art.
How do you do what you do? Describe your process.
I design or art direct a lot of the games and features on gURL.com. My work can include animated graphics and sound, or it can be as simple as a single page with layout. Every day is different. Sometimes I have three weeks blocked off to do an interactive game, like the boy band game or the reality TV show game, and those are really fun and challenging. At other times I'm working on shorter features. Occasionally, I have the chance to design a printed project. And then there's daily stuff like working with other designers and staff, overseeing the whole site and looking for any problems with the quality and checking to make sure that the gURL brand or look is intact.
How many people are involved in what you do?
We work in teams when we do features. I'll be paired up with a writer and a producer who will implement the design into html, perl, or something else. Sometimes I write a feature or comic myself and work directly with Cathy Halley, the gURL editor. Unlike some web design companies which have a more rigid structure, gURL has a very creative and collaborative environment.
What do you like most or dislike most about your work?
I feel like I'm the kind of girl that would have read gURL growing up. There are a lot of things that I didn't feel were targeted at me at all when I was a teen and I would have loved to have that. So working on something that I care about is the best part of working here. But sometimes I think our schedules are just way over-packed. Even though it's great to work on a lot of different things, sometimes it's easy to feel overwhelmed.
What was high school like? Were you into web design?
Well, first of all, the web didn't come into existence until after I graduated high school and began college. It's easy to forget that the web hasn't always been around.
In high school, I felt pretty weird primarily because in my small, rural town in South Carolina I was the only girl with short hair and the only girl who skateboarded. It was really hard to make friends, so I ended up having a lot of free time to do artwork. Then I moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and people didn't think I was weird at all.
Since there weren't many computers in my high school, I didn't even think about doing art on a computer. I spent my time doing photography, drawing and collage in the art room almost every day after school. One day, I went to a Photoshop workshop and I was like, "Wow, that's incredible!"
Did your college major relate to your work?
I majored in graphic design because my college did not have any kind of multimedia degree. The art school knew nothing about web design. I couldn't even get into a computer design class until my senior year, and by that time I'd already taught myself with manuals and through friends.
Tell us about your design for gURL's reality TV show game.
There is a shot of where you'd pitch your show to three TV producers. One of the fun things was trying to capture their unique personalities. I tried to make them all look a little intimidating to someone pitching a show, but at the same time funny-looking. First I did a really rough sketch of them in pencil and then took them into Adobe Illustrator.
