Welcome to my blog

ALLISON NORDIN

I am a graphic design and mathematics student at Portland State University. I go to school part-time and am on course to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design and a minor in mathematics by summer of 2020. I firmly believe that math is an integral part of art and graphic design and I hope that I can help other graphic design and art students learn to appreciate the beauty in math. I am interested in both print and digital design but am currently pursuing a career in web development and design. Through my courses at PSU I have learned to really enjoy HTML, CSS, and JavacSript coding as well as the challenges and triumphs of designing and coding a website from start to finish.

DESIGN CAREER

My introduction to graphic design was at The Broadside, which is the student newspaper at Central Oregon Community College. I was hired as a page designer and illustrator simply because I liked to draw. I had absolutely no experience in the Adobe Creative Suite but through the two years I worked at the Broadside I taught myself both Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, and decided to pursue graphic design at a University.

I graduated from COCC with an Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer Degree in 2016. I transferred to PSU for the 2016/17 school year and began my official graphic design courses. I passed the sophomore portfolio review at the end of my first year at PSU and was hired as an intern at Faceout Studio for the summer of 2017. Faceout Studio is a book cover design studio in Bend, OR. As their intern I designed book covers, built client presentations, and made edits for other designers. I also worked on a 100-book collection for Amazon, curating cover artwork and formating book mechanicals. I had two of my book covers selected, one by Georgetown University Press which was published in March of 2018 and one for Association for Talent Development which will be released in June of 2018.

Following my internship I returned to PSU for my junior year in the design program. In the fall of 2017 I took Interactive Media I, which is an introductory course to web design and development. During this course I grew to really enjoy coding in HTML and CSS. With coding, I was able to merge my love of problem solving with my love for art and design. Since that course I have been teaching myself to code in JavaScript and would like to become proficient in the language. I designed and developed this website using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I plan to continue editing and updating the site as my knowledge of coding grows. I feel very comfortable designing and coding for monitor displays but am really interested in learning to design and code mobile sites. I find coding to be challenging in the most exciting and rewarding ways and I am very excited to learn everything I can about it, which is why I believe a career in web development and design is the best option for my future.