I am a designer working in brand identity, and brand strategy. My process includes providing project management, consultation, art direction illustration for social media, print, web and messaging projects. Working as a teacher, artist, activist and marketing director has shown me my job is to unearth the stories of the people I work for in order to make them successful. For over 13 years I have leveraged human-centered design techniques including research and interdisciplinary collaboration to connect people to ideas, improve businesses, promote public awareness, and drive social change. No matter what type of entity you are, artist, start-up, or organization, your brand is your articulated purpose. It is your personality and morality told in stories. I help define that intention and develop assets along the way to translate that direction into forward movement in the world.
The stories I illuminate are centered around people, the focus of my work. My clients teach me about regenerative agriculture, woolly adelgids, the evolving philosophy of the health care industry, viticulture, library science, placemaking and environmental policy. I’ve been fortunate enough to develop science communication tools for a Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist and the Harvard Research forest. My volunteer design contributions have led me to work with an anti-genocide coalition, a refugee resettlement program, and international development entities working in realms from fresh water access to women’s education. .
The inception of my creative process, began as an artist, where I learned to generate ideas unabashedly without judgement. From there I constantly pushed my practice to function outside of myself in order to inspire and empower people to connect the dots between imagination and action. At the California College of the Arts I took that creative drive and through design I learned how to add context, communication and intention to every thing I made.
More recently I am stepping outside my design comfort zone and challenging myself to directly interact with and better understand the social injustices that concern me. Learning from activists on the streets, collaborating with scientists, and teaching ESL to New Americans in my community have often felt divergent from my professional trajectory. However, these interjections have done the most to illuminate my purpose of and lessons in social impact design.
When I let myself be fully indulgent, I am shooting 35mm film in a new country, backcountry skiing, trying a new recipe, or filling a sketchbook with drawings.
I love to scheme, brainstorm, and generally imagine "what if?"
Let's begin a conversation: carlsoncollective@gmail.com