Sometimes a Creatives’ journey into the career they love is a pretty straightforward path … and sometimes that journey is full of unexpected twists and turns.
And as someone who grew up convinced they’d someday be a doctor, Graphic Designer, Nicolle G has the perfect story of how sometimes your dream career just finds you in unexpected ways!
If you’re ready to hear how Nicolle transitioned from pre-med student to Pro Designer and one of Designity’s standout talents, then we’re ready to tell you.
Pull up a chair because it’s time to meet Nicolle!
How did you get into graphic design? What’s your origin story?
I grew up in New York and my mom saw that I had a passion for art and so I took painting lessons, I think as early as six or seven. I've always been around art and always have loved art.
But I actually was a pre-med biology major for my first three years of college; I was convinced I was going to be a doctor. And then there were some personal things that happened while I was in college; my dad passed away, I had a big move from Nevada to Florida, And while I was figuring out what I was going to do for school after the move, I started a job as an office manager at a tech company, and I became really good friends with the graphic designer.
And I started learning what graphic design was and I was always interested in art my whole life; I drew, I painted, and so I kind of had this revelation, “My gosh, I could have a job and get paid and do art! I think I would really enjoy that.”
So, I scrapped my pre-med major and I went to school to be graphic designer, and I got my associate's in graphic design in two years. I got a job right away and I continued schooling to get my bachelor’s and ended up with a bachelor's in fashion design while I was already working as a graphic designer.
It was a career direction shift but it was the right one for me.
What was your first creative-related job?
I've been a graphic designer almost 20 years now. In 2006, I graduated with my associates and got my first creative job.
I got hired as a graphic designer for a music company called Hanser Music Group in Tampa, Florida. It was an umbrella company that owned seven musical instrument companies. My job was working on lots of landing pages for websites. And, back in 2006, websites were a lot different than they are today; there was a lot of hand coding, lots of Adobe Flash, which doesn't exist anymore because it's all motion.
So, I did a lot of graphic design for web and a lot of production work for my creative director. But he quickly learned that I was not a production designer and gave me a lot of freedom and said, “You're a good designer. Design stuff.”
It was a great opportunity right out of college. I feel like I was very lucky to get such a creative job where I learned so much immediately out of school. I mean, I was designing guitar inlays, I was designing websites and packaging and going to photo shoots. It was pretty fun because we had a lot of musicians that used our product and I got to go to free concerts! It was super, super fun.
How did your career lead you to Designity?
When I took the job with the music company, I had been working as an office manager for a tech company, the same one that I'd been working for where I met the graphic designer.
My boss had been really sad that I left to go do another job, but he understood, and then about a year into that job, he reached out and asked me to come back to the company to be the designer.
So, I went back. The company's called Light Speed, Net Solutions; they did web design for tons of clients. When I came back, there was this big acquisition that had happened, and they moved operations to Indiana. So, that's how I moved from Florida to Indiana. I got promoted — I was the creative director for a while — and I worked there for a total of 12 or 13 years.
Then the church that I was attending — where I was doing a lot of volunteer work on the creative side — wanted to make a position for me. They made a creative director position and hired me on, so I left my job with the tech company. I'd been there for a long time and I was ready for something new.
I was there for a while and then I got married, and my husband and I talked about growing our family, but I didn't want to be away from home. So, when we knew that we wanted to have our child, I decided to work for myself full-time. I was working freelance, and I was doing really well; I had a lot of clients just because I had networked a ton, especially working at a church, you get to know people, and I was really busy. I was doing great and then two years ago, we decided to move to Arizona to be close to my parents.
We knew that if we were moving to Arizona, that I would have to have a little bit more income to help supplement the cost of living increase that we were going to experience.
And that's how I started working at Designity. I applied and, at the time, it was just going to be supplemental to my clients and now, two years later, I’ve stopped working with all my clients and I just do Designity full-time now!
What is your favorite kind of project to take on?
That's a good question because I feel like I do so much, and I like doing lots of different things.
I think my favorite kind of project right now is social media. I think it’s really fun because you get to be a little bit out of the box when it comes to the brand. Because, while you're still following the brand guide, there's an opportunity to do a little bit more, because of trends or targeting different audiences.
If you were creating something print, you’d have very strict guidelines you need to follow, but for social media, you get to break away from that a little bit. I find that fun and I enjoy the challenge of coming up with interesting ways to design for a product or service.
I just find I've been enjoying doing that on social media with my clients.
What has been your most challenging project and how did you overcome the challenges?
I have worked on a few challenging storyboard projects with Pooyan; I say challenging but in a good way because I feel like it's stretched me a lot.
With storyboards, we do a lot of sketching to create the story and the scenes and the camera angles, and then we turn those sketches into vectors so that the motion graphics person can take over and animate it.
It is quite the process; it's a challenge in that you have to really think in a different way than just creating something and being done with it. You have to imagine, “Okay, this is going to move and is it telling the right story and does it make sense from scene to scene?”
And so there were a few times when I first started doing storyboarding that I just wanted to quit because I felt like I wasn't doing a good job. But Pooyan was really good about encouragement and telling me, “You're doing a great job. Don't be frustrated with revisions,” and I'm glad I stuck through it because I feel like we've done three or four more storyboard projects now and I feel a lot more confident in that realm than I did when I first started doing that.
What is your favorite thing about working at Designity?
Definitely the remote aspect of it.
As a parent, our schedules are not very conducive to a 9–5 job. It's really important for me to be able to be there for my child when she comes home from school. I'm on Pacific Time half of the year and Mountain Time the other half, so I get up really early for East Coast time to start my day.
So, if I start work at 6:00 AM, I can be done by the time she's home from school, and then we can focus on homework and extracurriculars, and I can get dinner on the table for my family at a decent hour and we're not rushing.
I just love that there's that flexibility at Designity; that I don't have to get stuck in rush hour traffic and waste so much time commuting. I can be in my house where it's comfortable and I can be there for my family when they need me. Remote work suits me very well for that reason.
I think that's probably my favorite thing.
How do you keep yourself up to date with design and social media trends?
I'm on social media, Instagram probably more so than any other, and I actually follow a lot of the brands that I work with at Designity and I follow a lot of their competitors.
So, I think that allows me to see how the competitors are evolving and trends that they're doing, which gives me ideas of things, like “Maybe we should be trying this or that?” with the clients that I'm on.
I also like to read design blogs. I like tech, especially Apple products, so I like seeing what people are doing. I read Adobe's blog, where they talk about trends, people, and their perspectives on different trends and things.
I feel like just being in design day-to-day helps me at this point in my life. I don't have a ton of time to be reading on the Internet for two hours a day trying to know what's up. I just observe and see what people are doing and what companies are doing and what's working and what's not.
Is there any insight you can give about current trends?
You start to see that a lot of brands start doing the same thing and they're looking the same way and there's definitely waves of that that happen.
I think that that's something to take note of. Like, a company sees what's working and then everybody does it. It's a slippery slope because you think “That looks great, that would look great with our brand!” but then we look exactly like them.
You’ve got to try to find a way to be trendy but also stand out a little bit.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I definitely love spending time with my family. I joke that I really like them and I like doing things with them!
My husband and I do everything together, I feel like. My parents live in town and my cousins, so I just like to do family stuff, whether it's host a nice dinner or go enjoy hikes here in Arizona when the weather's cooler; we try to do that on the weekends and we're getting into that season. In the summer, we like swimming too.
I also like cooking, I like shopping, I just like doing normal things. I'm a pretty simple person.
I do like vacations, and I really like planning vacations. I like to plan so that when a vacation is over, I already know that there's another one to look forward to! So, that's kind of something that I enjoy doing.
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Any words of inspiration for aspiring designers out there?
Something that I had to learn pretty early on is, you can't take everything personally.
You can't fall in love with your work because there's always going to be someone who picks it apart somehow or another and finds something wrong with it.
It's good to have pride in the work that you do but don’t fall in love with it in a way that you're so emotionally attached to it that your feelings get hurt. You really have to disconnect yourself that way.
And not to take things personally. Not everyone's gonna love your work and that's okay. Just take things in strides. You can only control yourself, not other people's feelings or emotions especially towards you and your work.
So, just be who you are. Be authentic but don’t be sad if people don't like who you are.
