I spend a lot of time paying attention to brands — not just as a consumer, but as a designer trying to understand what's working and why. Some brands do safe, competent work. A few do something that actually makes you stop and look twice. This is about the latter.

Most of us scroll past hashtags without giving them a second thought. It's just noise, right? But if you look back at the last fifteen years or so, it's hard to argue that social media is just noise. Some of the most significant political upheavals of the 21st century had a digital backbone, and the Arab Spring is probably the clearest example of that.

Grad school is a lot. Creative grad school is its own specific kind of a lot, because the work doesn't clock out. You're not just doing assignments, you're thinking about design in the shower, on your commute, in the middle of conversations that have nothing to do with it.

You know that one post you can’t stop thinking about? The one you send to three friends, then revisit later? That’s “stickiness.” It’s not just about going viral, it’s about staying with someone.

I can't walk into a coffee shop or scroll past an ad without clocking the type first. Before the color palette, before the copy, I've already formed an impression. It's become a reflex, and once you develop it, you can't turn it off.

There's a version of design school that feels almost protected. You get a brief, you interpret it however you want, you present it to a room full of people who fundamentally want you to succeed, and then you move on to the next project. The stakes are real enough to keep you up at night, but they're also... contained. Nobody's brand is on the line. Nobody paid for this.

There's something unsettling about watching Kony 2012 years later. The first time, it feels urgent. Watching it again, the emotional pull is still there, but so is a creeping sense of unease.

Designing for yourself is one of the hardest things you can do as a designer. There's no brief, no client to push back on, and no external deadline forcing a decision. It's just you, your taste, and a blank canvas that somehow has to represent everything you are and want to be professionally.

You’ve probably shared a post, liked a story, or reposted something that felt important. It takes seconds. But what if those small actions are part of something bigger?

For me, it didn't happen at graduation — it happened mid-semester junior year, sitting across from my first real client, sketchbook open, and realizing that everything I'd practiced in studio had prepared me for the look of that conversation, but not quite the weight of it.

Social media gets a bad reputation, and honestly, a lot of it is deserved. The endless scrolling, the comparison traps, the rabbit holes that eat up an afternoon. But I think we're too quick to write it off entirely.

Redesigning a website is rarely just about aesthetics. Behind every interface decision is a deeper question about how people think, search, and make decisions online.

After conducting heuristic evaluations and structural analysis of the Clinique website, usability testing became the most important phase of this redesign process. Up until this point, much of my critique had been analytical. Usability testing shifted the focus from assumption to observation.

Five seconds doesn’t sound like much. But online, it’s often all you get.

Some of the most valuable UX research happens long before a product is fully built, or even built at all. Wizard of Oz studies are a great example of this kind of early exploration

One of the most persistent myths about design is that strong digital products emerge fully polished from a single, inspired idea. In reality, the most effective interactive experiences are shaped gradually through iteration: a cycle of designing, testing, learning, and refining.

Most of us don’t think twice about the fonts we see every day. We scroll past them, read through them, maybe notice when something looks “cute” or “serious,” but that’s about it.

The purpose of this photo essay was to capture what a typical week on Dance Fusion feels like — not just what we do, but the moods, rhythms, and relationships that shape the experience.

When you really think about it, design isn’t just about what looks good, it’s about how people think. Every color choice, layout, and micro-interaction on a screen plays into the messy, fascinating ways our brains make decisions

As designers, our role is to move beyond functionality and aesthetics to shape how people feel—because in a world full of choices, emotion is what people remember.