About

The Designer

Howdy! The name’s Kathy - as if you couldn’t tell from it being plastered all over this site - and the game is art, design, and creative problem solving.

I am a graduate of James Madison University where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts, cum laude, in Graphic Design with a minor in Art History in 2020. In my time in school I explored and developed my passions for illustration and web design while learning the values of working cohesively on a team as well as self-motivating and allowing my drive and curiosity to lead to innovation.

Since graduating, I’ve been working as the Graphic Designer and now Creative Lead of CodeVA, a Richmond-based non-profit advocating for equitable computer science access to all of Virginia’s students. In my time there I’ve uncovered an interest in ethics-driven design and made an effort to continue learning more about design practices and collaborative techniques through books, online courses, and attending the 2022 AIGA Design Conference in Seattle.

The Story

I found my love for design and illustration at the same time as I found my love for roleplaying games. Towards the middle of my high school career I was introduced to art-based roleplaying online and fell hard for digital art. My groups and characters inspired me to get a graphics tablet and begin experimenting in Photoshop.

My senior year I signed up for a Digital Imaging class, feeling it would be an easy “A” because of the basic Photoshop skills I’d picked up from drawing my characters. I was awestruck by how much more the program could do when properly incorporating its seemingly endless functions and features, and for the first time began considering graphic design as a career. In the fall of 2016 I took a risk and put all of my free time into developing a portfolio to apply for James Madison University’s School of Art, Design, and Art History, ignoring the advice of my lawyer parents to take a more academic route.

Over the next four years I surrounded myself with art, eagerly clinging on to any and all advice I could get from my professors as well as my classmates, many of whom had, unlike me, spent years developing and refining their craft before college. While my program focused intently on typography and layout design, I was introduced to illustration as a form of design and felt immediately drawn to it as a method of representational storytelling. With this passion in mind, I catered my exploratory coursework around developing my draftsmanship through figure drawing and painting classes while working to incorporate illustration into every design project where it was appropriate and applicable.

In May of 2020 I graduated into the pandemic. The world was suddenly flipped on its head and my plans to move cross-country were dashed as traveling became increasingly dangerous and businesses scaled back out of fear of the coming months. I was privileged enough to be able to live with my parents over that summer as I applied for position after position, unsure of my next move. Nothing stuck, but I kept my work up by sketching regularly, maintaining an Instagram presence, and creating YouTube videos about my creative process. At the end of the summer, an old friend and I made the decision to move to Richmond, and I set a path onward.

During my month as a temp data entrist I realized how important it is for me to be invested in my work. I was delighted when CodeVA crossed my LinkedIn search; their fun, human-centered approach to computer science education struck me as a perfect fit, and they agreed. During my time on staff I’ve illustrated posters, laid out curriculum, designed slide templates, and begun to work on a redesign of our brand for the company’s 10 year anniversary. Being the sole designer in the organization has been a challenge, but getting to be involved in every step of each project has pushed my design and illustration capabilities far beyond where they’d been before.