Teaching

Every student arrives with their own learning style, goals, and ideas about what “good design” looks like, often shaped by the media and images they consume. My teaching is built on a classroom where students feel supported, challenged, and inspired to develop their own artistic voices: exploring new ideas while understanding what they already like and why. I scaffold projects so each student can examine their assumptions about what makes design effective or ineffective, and leave with a method for building a sustainable creative practice.

An inclusive classroom is central to how I teach. I build an environment that encourages experimentation, collaboration across disciplines, and critical engagement with the materials and ideas we study. Assignments mirror the challenges students will meet as working designers, so they learn what design is like in the workplace. I make sure the designers I show as examples of exceptional work come from many backgrounds, lived experiences, and identities, so every student can find designers they see themselves in. I guide students’ creative exploration while giving them the skills to critique their own work and the work of others. They build typographic arguments through a “For” and “Against” poster series, practice systems thinking in a trading-card design system project, and turn layout and audience strategy into a book cover campaign with a full cover spread and promotional mockups.

My teaching emphasizes open discussion, cooperative learning, and hands-on work. From the first day, I encourage openness, laughter, and collaboration, which builds a strong learning community and supports each student’s growth. Because students learn in different ways, I present new material in several formats: live demonstrations, written instructions, and video walkthroughs they can revisit outside class. The result is a classroom where students feel comfortable taking creative risks, discussing ideas with their peers, and sharing their own perspectives.

I teach software and technology inside each project, during the ideation and production phases, so every tool connects directly to what students are making. In discussion and revision, students learn why they use a tool as well as how. Learning tools in context teaches professional best practices, including workflow, tool choice, user experience, and final output. Students leave with a workflow that scales into professional practice and an understanding of the reasons behind it.

Engaging with the world beyond the classroom is essential to students’ growth as artists and critical thinkers. I bring professional practice into the course through community-engaged projects, case studies, and group work, so students meet the challenges of real-world design in the safety of the classroom and see how their work can affect individual consumers and the wider culture. Individual check-ins, in-progress critiques, and final critiques give students regular practice talking about their work with the concepts and vocabulary they are learning.

I want students to leave my classroom with refined technical skills, the ability to communicate clearly through their work, and the preparation to handle professional situations. I draw on my own experience as a working artist, illustrator, and designer who has exhibited and partnered with organizations nationally and internationally; sharing that experience helps students understand what they are making and how to talk about it. I also encourage them to combine traditional and digital media in their projects. Ultimately, I want each student to build a sustainable creative practice they can carry beyond school into a fulfilling career and a meaningful life.