Introducing Jean Roth

Jean Roth thinks of herself as a creative alchemist because she brings a multifaceted background in marketing, design, writing, and intercultural aesthetics to her design work.

Show Notes

Website | Rotem Studio

Facebook | Rotem Studio

Linked In | jeanroth

Twitter | @rotemstudio

Episode Transcript

Liam: This is Hallway Chats, where we talk with some of the unique people in and around WordPress.

Tara: Together, we meet and chat with folks you may not know about in our community.

Liam: With our guests, we’ll explore stories of living – and of making a living with WordPress.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 34.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Jean Roth. Jean thinks of herself as a creative alchemist because she brings a multifaceted background in marketing, design, writing, and intercultural aesthetics to her design work. Hello, Jean.

Jean: Hello. How are you?

Liam: Hey, Jean. We’re doing really well today, thanks for joining us. Would you tell us a little bit more about yourself? More than what Tara just read?

Jean: Well, I’m a graphic designer and now also a web designer. I started off in a totally different area. Basically, marketing and PR, and that sort of evolved organically. Now, I put all of these things together, writing, marketing, design work, and try to find out the best way to visually express what my clients need.

Liam: That sounds pretty neat. Tell us a little bit about how that works out day to day? What kind of clients are you working with and what kind of design and marketing efforts are you helping guide them through?

Jean: Well, mostly I’ve been working with small businesses. Some of them are artisans, some are other kind of service-oriented businesses. For quite a number of years, I was working for a publishing company, I was contracted as a graphic designer doing mainly advertising design. Enjoyed that very, very much and when that company was sold, I decided to expand into web design. And I already had been doing web design for myself but I decided to make this part of what I offered to clients.

Tara: There’s a difference between print graphic design, and advertising background, and also web design. Some of the things that you learn are completely the opposite in websites. What’s been your path in learning the ins and outs of web design?

Jean: I started with WordPress, first of all. Before that, of course, HTML and Shutter front page back in the ’90s when people started writing blogs and that became a thing. WordPress was still fairly new, I decided I needed to do that as well, and I found WordPress. I found it a little bit more involved and robust than Blogspot, latter Blogger, that everybody else seemed to be jumping on. And so I started with WordPress, and for all of these years, I’ve had several WordPress sites of my own. But since they weren’t my own and since they weren’t my primary gig, I could afford to be sloppy with them, I didn’t have to always stay up to date. Obviously, in the past three or four years, when I’ve been doing this far more seriously and I’m responsible for clients, I’ve had to really up my game and things changed so fast. The technology has changed, it seems like every two days there’s something new and it’s very challenging and I just keep learning every day to bring it up to speed. In terms of how it is different or alike from graphic design or print design, something still stays. Things like less is more,