GRAPHIC DESIGN
Nicole Skarlatos
Graphic Designer
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Outgoing
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Creative
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Social
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Visionary
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Researcher
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Greek
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Pet lover
A Bit About Me
During
My professor frequently told me that graphic design was vastly different from digital media studies. With this in mind, I continued my digital media education and sought to find work within the university focusing on design-related work. I worked for the school newspaper, The Nevada Sagebrush, for three years as their design editor. In addition to this job, I worked as a graphic designer for Inkblot, a student-run, a faculty-led design agency for clubs and organizations on campus. In these jobs, I would find my inspiration came from more simplistic designs rather than complicated ones. This change in style differed strongly from my high school notions of what good design was. Before I could finish the last semester of my digital media degree, I learned that UNR had started offering a graphic design program. I immediately reapplied to continue my education. After a more professional education in graphic design, I knew I appreciated the Swiss Style of graphic design and using grids to make sure my work stayed consistent.
Future Goals
In the future, I hope to find my place working for Google. I enjoy their UI and UX designs and other branding elements they use to stand apart from other internet browsers. They are now more than an internet browser as they make phones and even tablets. I see myself working for several years at smaller agencies to gather even more design knowledge and experience to achieve this goal.
Growing Up
I enjoyed being active and creative and finding different ways to express myself through art. Over the years, my style in art began to change when I realized the beauty of simplicity. I was admitted into a technical school in Las Vegas, Nevada, called West Career and Technical Academy as a teenager. Here I honed my skills in graphic design and began to work in art in a very different way.
Starting Out
I was hesitant about graphic design because this kind of visual communication was a whole different style of thinking. At first, I would make designs honing my previous notions of art-making. Most of my designs were too busy and hard to read. I fell victim to being entranced by script fonts and abstract fonts and using them in body paragraphs and other more complex to read sections on my artboard. My outlines and shape creations with the pen tool were rough and ragged as my knowledge of Adobe Illustrator was still very rudimentary. As a senior, I had a goal of becoming an anesthesiologist after college. Still, after submitting my application to major in biology, I quickly realized that I wanted to continue my path in graphic design. I quickly realized that my university did not offer graphic design as a major during my college education. However, I was informed that I could major in digital media with a minor in journalism. There was hardly any proper training in graphic design within the digital media major.