What I Design ~ Christie Koester

Kind of funny but when I was searching for colleges while in high school, all I cared about was volleyball. Volleyball. Was. My. Life! It was all I knew. I remember asking my dad what he thought I was good at as I was filling out the applications and he said "speaking in front of people and writing."

So the major "Speech Communications" seemed to work for me. Check.

From there, I realized I could easily ace the classes where I had to either stand up in front of class and give a speech (thanks to my parents for making me read scripture in front of church all the time) or write a paper. So perhaps I picked the right major. However, one thing I never had to do a lot of was designing, until I picked up an unpaid Internship my junior year at UW-Whitewater. And I loved it.

A brochure I designed

I loved learning the computer software. I loved the challenge of trying to see a project through. I loved making boring things look really cool. And that love carried over into my career. My first job out of college was at a church. I couldn’t just do bulletins. I was hungry for more and more. I had to make things look better. I needed to get my hands in everything. Soon I was coming up with idea after idea.

I love designing our calendars every year

That determination took off but I realized I did all I could at the church and needed to move on to grow even more. Soon at my next job I was able to take a series of design classes where I learned Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Illustrator. Totally sweet! And my next job after that led me to learn all about web design.