Picture the intersection of form and function—the perfect balance achieved when a design speaks most powerfully to exactly the right audience. That’s where Erin thrives. The immersive, true-to-life experiences she gained at Penn College prepared her for a dynamic design career, including her current role as lead designer for Rodeo Austin.
I’ve been drawn to the arts and creative visual since I was young. You bet every one of my PowerPoint presentations was the prettiest in my class in high school, too! I’m also a person who likes a lot of order. Graphic design is the perfect outlet for someone like myself who craves functionality, but wants everything to be fun, cool, or beautiful. It impacts everyone on a daily basis, whether you realize it or not.
The graphic design program at Penn College truthfully creates a real expectation, as much as it possibly can, of what working as a designer is like. Speed problems are given out often, in preparation for tight turnarounds, which happen so much in one’s design career, specifically at my current job at Rodeo Austin. We get opportunities to put our work out into our community.
Our professors give us a heavy workload for projects, but it's the best way to design as much as possible and have the ability to revisit designs we’ve done to evolve. I don’t see many other programs requiring a project that is fully brought to life by our own prompts, conception, creation, and production like Penn College does. Feedback and critiques are an aspect of daily life, and it’s never personal. These help us push our boundaries in a collaborative environment. You can really get anything out of collaboration with others, whether they are in design or not. These are all qualities I look for when hiring now.
My marketing minor has definitely helped my design skills. I try to balance the fun visual side, with the “why” behind what my work does. Most positions I have been within a marketing department, so it helps to understand what else my team does and why we place certain assets or visuals places. Understanding the messaging behind a brand, product, event, etc. is important to relay to audiences you want, and understand how they are impacted. In my opinion, the best design has the strongest/clearest message or impact. There is marketing everywhere, especially today where we are constantly flooded with it and “everyone is in marketing,” but actual marketing is understanding your audiences and connecting with them.
I could go on for hours about this. The experience working here is all encompassing. I’m their only designer, so I get a lot of autonomy over my work and touch every type of design. I do everything from arena graphics, advertisements, and national TV ads to swag, printed materials, fairgrounds maps, and signage. With that comes a welcoming ability to create freely, but also help set the standard for what people see of our brand and recognize. I work with people who are so kind and supportive, but also wonderful at their jobs and know so much. This is a workplace where I learn and grow every day. It’s also multifaceted, because I get the excitement of working in events and getting to step outside of my desk and get my hands dirty. But on the other hand, Rodeo Austin is a non-profit organization that raises money and supports kids across Texas with youth programs and college scholarships. Growing up in 4-H, I benefited from a lot of this, so it’s great to be able to give back to the next generation.
My career has bounced from different industries. In my first job out of college, I was the sole designer at ThinkSun, which was a B2C product/e-commerce company. I also did everything from packaging, photography, and advertising to social. Then I pivoted to higher education design, working in on the brand team in the marketing department at the University of Texas at Austin. Of course, now I’m the sole designer working at Rodeo Austin. I’ve gotten to experience (with myself always being the youngest in the room) working with amazingly knowledgeable and talented teams of women who taught me a lot. It’s a highlight to say that my work currently gets seen by hundreds of thousands of people across the US and the world. Yes, plenty of Rodeo attendees are from out of the country! It's fulfilling to see the impact of what I do everyday, but also know that it serves a purpose higher than just fulfilling myself. My work gets people in the door to give back to a lot of students who also want to keep learning. I’m very grateful for that.
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