Hello!
I’m Alecia and I am so glad you’re here. Thank you for stopping by to check out my work and learn a little more about me. As you can see, design is just part of who I am—I believe that beauty is truly in the details and, well, these three guys are some of my most important details. They are the driving force behind my daily decision to rise and say yes to the beautiful-but-always-challenging life of a creative.
About me
If you’d have asked me in high school if I could see myself having a career in design, I’d have quickly said no. I was not the artist in the family. I was the writer. The musician. The dancer. The photographer. The documentarian. But never an artist or designer. (I vow to never show anyone those yearbook pages I was responsible for.)
Come college search time, no one was surprised that I was drawn to schools with strong writing and music programs. They pegged me as an English or music teacher. My sensitive, nurturing soul would make me the best teacher they said. So when I honed my search in on schools with award-winning journalism programs (and, even more specifically, magazine journalism programs), I raised some eyebrows. They thought I was crazy for going down such a niche path. Would I ever find a job in something so specific they wondered—and so did I.
What I didn’t see then that I can see clearly now is that my decision to pursue magazine journalism at Drake University was a critical first step to me finding myself in so many ways.
While I entered the program with aspirations of becoming an editor, my coursework eventually lead me astray with dreams of becoming an art or creative director. But I had no design experience. None. (Unless you count those horrible high school yearbook pages.)
So, more than half way through my college experience, I added a dual degree in graphic design. While I was pretty sure my work was awful (I lived in a constant state of embarrassment during class critiques), two faculty came alongside me and shepherded my skills and fostered a deep passion for typography and layout. Or, maybe more specifically, for visual storytelling.
Now, more than 15 years into a career bringing stories to life through editorial design and branding , I can look back and see exactly how I got here. How the girl who would need to take 15 rolls of film to be developed after a high school dance, who loved to compose music, choreograph dances, journal, and spend countless hours meticulously coloring in Leisure Arts pattern books made her way into a career in design and creative direction.
I am a unique blend of free spirit and meticulous attention to details. I am a creative leader with high expectations but humble about my own work—probably to a fault. I value humility and a desire for growth in others and do my best work when there’s a spirit of iron-sharpening-iron. I believe that trust is a core tenet of successful creative collaboration and that it’s the most essential element of building successful brands.
And, as I said, I believe beauty is in the details.