Adriana Koc-Spadaro has been a graphic designer and art director since graduating from the IDEA Program at Capilano University in 2007.

Adriana is a very visual person and loves to create solutions and stories through photography and visual art. She believes in creating solutions to communicate good values and out of the box ideas.

Her passion is to create images that disrupt the norm and offer beauty in diversity. Her goal is to collaborate with companies that believe in showing ideas that are not traditional but still represent core values and a good message. She believes that there is a lot of opportunities to create positive messages in art and media.

In her spare time, Adriana makes time to paint regularly and is very involved in the wellness industry. She believes that self-care and wellbeing empower us to be truly ourselves. From that place, great creative ideas come to us.

She is a volunteer with an organization called Free to Be to spread education to young children about the effects of media on our psyches and self-worth. Read her recent feature in IDEA, Life After Design School blog for her passion project and creative direction for Dinner on the Pier.

Here’s what we cover:

• How she got started in the design world and ran the marketing department of the company she worked for
• Why she thinks freelancing is a lot more fun than working full-time and how she’s dipped in and out of it since she started in 2007
• The story behind how she got one of her early international projects on Twitter
• Why she believes collaboration is key to building your portfolio and helping you learn your skills
• How she’s built a reputation for being out-of-the-box and how designers can do the same thing
• Why she believes that success is really built on relationships
• The vision behind her impressive portfolio and why writing things down helped her create the different chapters in her portfolio
• Why she believes in “less is more” and showing off the type of work she wants to attract in her business
• How designers can create an amazing portfolio
• Her tips for collaboration with other creatives and why it comes down to just valuing the people within the project
• The story behind some of the projects she’s done with Lululemon
• The processes that are important when creating a brief and conceptual outline
• Her tips for getting ongoing projects with clients
• Why she doesn’t believe in faking it until you make it
• How she blends art and intuition and her spiritual growth
• The new thing that’s happening in her business and why it’s being more
• Why she thinks designers should focus their portfolio with the growth they want to experience
• Her beliefs about why self-care, and aligning your life + work with your values and why it’s all connected!

Links Mentioned:

Adriana’s Website

Adri’s Design Instagram

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