At Michigan State University, I studied journalism with a specialization in design—I had dreams of being a page designer for a newspaper or magazine. My first gig out of school was working at the Gannett Design Studio in Louisville, Kentucky. There I had the opportunity to design pages on the sports sections for a variety of papers, such as the Cincinnati Enquirer, Louisville Courier Journal and the Lansing State Journal. My crowning achievement was designing the special edition A1 cover for the 2012 Kentucky Derby (it’s bigger than Christmas Day down there).
I next moved on to my first taste of the automotive world, working as a graphic designer for Automobile Magazine. It was a great experience to transition from daily newspapers to a monthly magazine, and it was also my first chance to design for the digital space with the accompanying iPad edition of the magazine.
