From Graphic Designer to UX: How Brand Work Became the Bridge to Strategic Thinking
For most of my career, I solved one problem well: how should this look? Brand identities, campaigns, annual reports, and marketing systems — work where visual precision and strategic clarity mattered equally. Graphic design is ultimately judged by the end result. The finished poster, the final logo, the polished layout. The process in between is invisible. What matters is that the outcome looks right.
But, the questions I wanted to answer were different. How does this function? How does a user engage? What happens when the brand meets actual behavior? Those aren't questions about appearance. They're questions about how something works.
That's when I got interested in UX.
Graphic design and UX both require understanding an audience, communicating hierarchy, and making complex information legible. But there's a gap between designing something that looks right and designing something that works right. Bridging that gap is what pushed me further.
The sign to transition came from an unexpected source: my twin sister. She made a bold leap of her own, pivoting into UX from fashion through UX Women. Watching her shift the way she talked about design — from aesthetics to systems, from output to outcome — I recognized I wanted to develop this for myself. When I received a sponsored spot in the UX Woman program, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
That decision changed how I think about design entirely.
In graphic design, the process serves the artifact. In UX, the process is the work. I learned to lead with the problem before reaching for a solution. To treat a user flow as a hypothesis, not a formality. To understand that the most important decisions are often invisible, buried in research findings, information architecture, and the logic connecting one screen to the next.
I carried that shift into real work. TrueWorth, a trauma-informed financial platform for people in addiction recovery, drove me to build a design system from the ground up. I'm still a visual designer. That typographic instinct, the compositional control, the brand fluency. It doesn't disappear. It sharpens UX work in ways that pure UX training alone doesn't always produce. I now bring something graphic design couldn't give me: a way of thinking that starts with people, moves through systems, and arrives at solutions designed to work — not just to look like they do.
Outside of work, I enjoy visiting art museums, attending design events, and staying active through kickboxing and Zumba. I also maintain a daily meditation practice that keeps me grounded. I love creating digital kaleidoscopes, exploring Boston, and traveling in Europe. When I’m in my office, I’m often joined by my cat, Spike, who keeps me company during all my design challenges.
