For my undergrand senior showcase, I collaborated with all my peers to create our show's theme, "DUI: Designing Under The Influence". I created a 6"x6" invitation highlighting my diverse influences as a designer, as well a brief personal statement detailing how I see my life as my creative inspiration. 

 

I am Sophie, the manifestation of one possibility, and my journey of human experience is my influence. Everything I have seen, been, done, touched, felt, eaten, drank, tasted, loved, hated, envied, wanted, desired, bought, stolen, fought for, fought against, trusted, shut out, let in, surpassed, achieved, quit, failed at, given, taken, created, sang, danced, thought up, destroyed, said, fantasized about, and longed for have shaped me. Every person I've met, memory I've made, moment I experienced, and thing I have remembered shapes me as much as all that has come before me and will come after me.

 

Ever since I can remember, I have been interested in the visual world around me, always wanting to know everything about everything and everyone. I collected anything that interested me, from acorns and broken bits of asphalt I found playing outside, to magazines, coins, and to my mother's chagrin, water bottles from my travels around the world, to name a few. I spent hours pouring over the ads and layouts in my mother's fashion magazines, dreaming of doing something in advertising, but unsure of what path to take. But I didn't know anything about the specifics of design until I was 18.

 

I learned about the possibility of actually majoring in graphic design from my older brother, who handed me a note over breakfast the morning we were to tour Suffolk University. He thought it was something I should explore because of my interest in the visual world. I jumped at the chance and was fortunate enough to be accepted in to the art school without a portfolio.

 

Since then I've learned a lot and grown into a new person. I couldn't imagine how that would be possible, to come as one and leave as another, but I understand now. Design is more than an action, it's a way of being. 

 

 

While I may consciously be inspired by my contemporaries, I am still unconsciously influenced by things I saw or experienced in the past. My goal upon graduation is to work as a graphic designer in a small studio, or as an assistant art director in an advertising firm, but ultimately I want to be the creative director of my own design studio, where I can explore all forms of design.