In this first episode of season two, Saint Rose graduate and art director at TracyLocke, Susi Cadena talks about working and living in New York City, designing for big brands like Pepsi and Godiva, navigating the process of corporate sponsorship for foreign nationals working in the U.S., and TracyLocke’s Design Collective.

It’s time for Season 2 of Design Futures.

This past summer I had the pleasure of talking with a group of amazing alumni and I’m super excited to share their diverse stories of life after school. In Season 2 we’ll hear  from designers who work in the areas of biotech, social impact, animation & motion graphics, social media, exhibition & events, and agencies.

In this final episode of Season 1 Melike Turgut, 2011 graduate of Ringling College of Art & Design, discusses the career path that started with a company-supplied apartment in Brooklyn and led her to the current role as Design Manager of Web Expressibility at Squarespace.

If you’re just out of school you’ll want to listen to this interview with Associate Graphic Designer at Insider, Alyssa Powell. She talks about the challenges of landing her first job and the random connection that led to it.

In episode six we travel west to Colorado to talk with illustrator and designer Amanda Lenz. We talk about remembering how to talk to people with the help of renting a desk at a co-working space, illustrating a portrait of Oprah Winfrey for Time Magazine, and being selected for the Adobe Creative Residency Community Fund.

It’s baseball season. In episode five, graphic designer at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Dani Dayton talks about designing exhibition and social media graphics, inauguration tickets, and the retail catalog.

In episode four, 2014 graduate of the College of Saint Rose, Erica Cotten and I nerd-out about user flows, prototyping with Sketch and Figma, the art of comic books, and the UI pattern of toggles.

The husband and wife team at Macaroni Creative, Ron Gibbons and Mackenzie Carey, join me in episode three. We discuss designing for consumer packaged goods, leaving their full-time jobs to start their own design firm, and being the only designers in the room.

In this episode creative director and entrepreneur, Paul Gonzalez shares stories about making pillows with his mom as a child in Sarasota, FL, his appreciation for House music, and being a professional Salsa dancer.

In this first episode I talk to Josh Terry, graphic designer at T Brand Studio at The New York Times, about his role as an editorial designer working on branded content articles for advertising clients.