ASSOCIATE DESIGNER
COLLINS, NEW YORK NY
I’m an Associate Designer at COLLINS — and currently based in New York City. Previously, I interned at Apple and also worked with clients including Square and Nikolas Type. My work spans brand development, art direction and interaction design, and has been recognized by the Type Directors Club and the Webby Awards, among others.
How did you become involved in socially responsible communications and why do you believe design can be an effective tool for this goal?
I initially came into this profession because I enjoyed making things. As I delved deeper into design and its history, I began to realize it’s a process that touches and affects us all. Being a designer meant that I could expand people’s abilities to discover and understand new perspectives beyond their own.
While there’s certainly gratification in creating beautiful things alone, I find it most fulfilling to witness what my work can enable others to do. After a close encounter with a natural disaster in the beginning of 2020, I was moved to create a project that spotlights the urgency and severity of our emerging global reality. The idea came to life in a project titled 2°C Earth — an interactive visual guide that explores destinations around the world whose natural and cultural heritage is threatened by climate change.
I was able to use my design skill sets to translate the dense, jargon-heavy content from the scientific community and shape it into a visually engaging experience that can be more easily understood. 2°C Earth, in turn, became an image-led, multi-sensory project that aims to educate and inspire more people to join the collective fight for our future. With 145k page views after its launch, and the ‘Take Action’ page being the second most visited following the homepage, I’d like to think that it has touched a few people’s hearts while inspiring others to take action.
Given the confluence of events and challenges our society now faces, does 2021 present any special opportunities, urgencies, obstacles to designing for good?
We’re all in this strange and precarious time, where hope and despair coexist. 2021 has given us a glimpse into the future of our climate — one of compounding disasters and concurrent crises. As designers, we have the obligation to consider the real impact of our work, which is always bigger than ourselves. With the world going more virtual as we speak, designers can reach an even broader audience to amplify messages instilling hope and inspiring action. At the same time, more companies are confronting their environmental impacts head-on. This momentum presents additional opportunities to incorporate sustainable materials in their design and manufacturing as well as building closed-loop production processes that help us define a clearer path to carbon neutrality, and to that greener planet we all call home.
