“Life is change. If you aren’t growing and evolving, you’re standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.”

I became a firm believer in the mindset “if we aren’t evolving, we aren’t growing” a few years ago while working for Island Realty. Though I loved my job and all the wonderful people I was working with, I realized that I had hit a plateau as far as my skills were concerned. My passion for design was at an all time high and I was constantly craving an outlet for creative inspiration and guidance.

After much research and debate, I decided to head back to school to pursue my M.A. in Graphic Design. I can almost hear the groans now I as type this post — “Art school…Isn’t tuition crazy expensive?!?” or how about “Art? What a worthless major!”. I know because I had the same thoughts debating whether or not this was the right decision, the right time to go back to school or whether I should just look for a new position elsewhere. Luckily, I was able to silence the negative, self-limiting thoughts in my mind just long enough to hit the submit button on the application.

And oh boy, was I glad I did! Savannah College of Art and Design turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made! For my undergraduate degree, I had attended Georgia Tech (also located in Atlanta, Georgia) so I was excited to be back on my old stomping grounds. However, I quickly learned that I was not amongst the personality types that I had become accustomed to while at Georgia Tech, such as engineers and other technical thinkers. While at SCAD, my peers became artists who were able to embrace another way of thinking that went beyond reasonable, logical explanations and instead relied on intuition to find connections that others did not see. Not only was I able to increase my basic design skills, but I also learned that looking at a problem in a more than one way can help uncover hidden solutions.

So, back to the present and the key takeaway from this whole saga! As I started to plan my goals for 2015 a few months ago, I realized that a stagnant web presence was not the way I wanted to start a new year. I wanted to create a space to share my ideas and thoughts as well as display my design and photography portfolio. A place where I can interact with other designers and develop key relationships for business growth in the future. From this, I determined that to continue to grow my personal brand, which included multiple websites and social media sites at the time, I would need to create one streamlined website, generate sharable content for my social platforms and also alter my focus from skill development to network building.

However, updating my portfolio and posting my thoughts are not the only reasons for this website revamp. I also want to start conversations with other designers and creatives on trends, developments and design methods. Because if we are not continuing to learn from others and grow our skills, then the rest of the world will surely surge ahead without us! So please feel free to share your comments, ideas, links and questions in the comments section where we can discuss all things art and design.

I am sincerely grateful to you for reading & sticking around to grow with me! 🙂