those fun aspects into the look of our All Access books!
What does a typical day for the Design Director at Anita
Goodesign entail? Honestly, this answer varies so much
depending on where we are in a month. As Design Director, I
handle doling out the department’s day to day tasks, including
scanning in stitch-outs, editing tutorials, creating product
packaging and more. I also work directly with our Creative
Department creating custom templates for our larger releases,
making new layouts for content pieces for All Access, and working
out new and innovative ways to showcase our designs. Our
Digital Marketing Manager, Sam, comes up with ideas for different
sales promotions and then collaborates with me on the look and
feel of each promotion. We then both work directly with our Sales
and Events teams to create additional marketing materials and
advertisements for our products.
What is your favorite aspect of being a graphic designer? The
creative process. Design is a little more systematic than traditional
art. There are design principles to adhere to and ways to arrange
things in order to make them more accessible to your audience. The
process can be highly collaborative as well. At Anita Goodesign,
our designers work with our educators, who have direct access to
our customers, to make sure that our layouts arrange information
in a way that makes it easier for them to engage with our products.
What has been your favorite All Access issue to work on
thus far and why? That’s a tough choice, but I would have to
say the June 2018 All Access. The Dolls 1,2,3 Premium was
included in that edition, and was one of my favorite collections
that I’ve worked on. I was able to collaborate with both our Art
and Creative Directors to come up with the look for the book. We
brainstormed for awhile and landed upon the idea of a school
notebook, full of polaroid-style pictures, doodles and illustrations.
I was given free rein to come up with different settings to put
the dolls in, and then create the illustrations. I had my designers,
Melissa and Dani, take posed photos of the dolls, then I went
in and drew the environments around the dolls. My personal
favorite was our Rohan doll riding his skateboard at the skate
park! The final product is one of the cutest things I think I’ve ever
had the pleasure of creating for Anita Goodesign, and having the
opportunity to collaborate with so many of our departments was
a lot of fun.
Can you indulge readers with any exciting projects that you
are working on for All Access that they can look out for in
2019? In January 2019’s All Access we introduced a new feature
called “Block of the Month.” In it, we showed how to use a simple
quilt block pattern to create a series of different, engaging quilt
designs. In the coming months we will continue to release a new
quilt block that can be used in a variety of ways depending on
the arrangement of your fabrics and the orientation of the blocks.
Each month’s block release will showcase new colors, patterns,
and graphics which will hopefully help inspire our customers to
create something that is truly one-of-a-kind! I’ve taken a peek at
the artwork for some of the future blocks, and I’m excited to see
what our customers create using these innovative blocks.
Employee Spotlight | All Access | 209
My sweet fur child, Tasha, is
extremely photogenic and loves to be
in front of the camera.