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“Portfolio Center is Really Shaping Me as a Creative.”

An Interview with graphic design program student Emily Kemp

1. What is the one thing you would say to a prospective student about why they apply to Portfolio Center? You will learn more here about your discipline than you thought was humanly possible. Portfolio Center will have a very positive and amazing impact on you if you can challenge yourself, listen, and not give up when the going gets tough with certain assignments.

2. Can you think of a quote/statement/truism a teacher here has said to you that has made a difference in your school work or life? "A confused mind says no" - Shawn Brasfield

3. What is your favorite thing about being a Portfolio Center student? The environment here is incredibly motivating, and we have the most inspiring and knowledgeable educators at our fingertips. Being able to converse and learn from creative professionals in the industry is so valuable.

4. So far, what has been your favorite class in the graphic design program? Why? My favorite class thus far has been Web Design. Once I was challenged with the exercise of distilling a desktop site and all of its components into a mobile version, I really started to understand the importance of design in our everyday lives.

5. What would you say about the friendships you've formed at Portfolio Center? I've got to say I have enjoyed and found myself inspired by every one of my classmates, each person has their own unique way of viewing the world. I truly enjoy learning about my classmates and getting to know other creatives who have the same interests.

6. Describe the atmosphere of the school in one sentence. Excited, inspired and driven creatives, we're all in this experience together.

7. What's the hardest thing about being a student here? The hardest part is definitely developing a keen sense of design thinking. This process takes the longest. To interpret it and understand it and appreciate it, you have to be determined and not give up.

8. What three adjectives best describe the experience of Portfolio Center? Valuable. Legitimate. Challenging.

9. What is the most positive change you've seen in yourself since coming to school here? Portfolio Center is really shaping me as a creative, I've learned how to value everyone's ideas and not just consult my professor's opinions on work, but my peers also.

10. What do you look forward to most in your professional life after you graduate? I look forward to the challenge, and I look forward to all the experiences and knowledge I can gain from people I will work with and, more importantly, work for.

An Art Director’s Take On His Portfolio School

An Interview with Art Direction Program Student Owen Morgan

1. What is the one thing you would say to a prospective student about why they should apply to Portfolio Center? We are like the Illuminati of the Creative Professionals' World: Our network has people in places of power in every corner of the industry and we gleefully support nepotism because once you've passed through the crucible of Portfolio Center, we know you've learned how to work hard and think fast.

2. Can you think of a quote/statement/truism a teacher here has said to you that has made a difference in your school work or life? Your first idea is never your best idea.

3. What is your favorite thing about being a Portfolio Center student? That more is expected of you than you really believed possible, but if you work hard and show up, there are other people to help you achieve whatever you set out to do. Everybody tries to make everyone else's work better, for in doing so, they are learning themselves. That in-and-of-itself is why this would be the only school I've attended that I wouldn't be entirely embarrassed about wearing its branded sweatshirt. Also, I know it would be well designed. Thankfully we don't have one, so it isn't a real concern.

4. So far, what has been your favorite art direction program class? Why? Rick's concepting class forces you to learn what makes a good idea and teaches you how to get there faster and faster. In the real world, one doesn't have the luxury of time, so you need to learn how to be that f#@$ good, because you are competing against people who already are.

5. What would you say about the friendships you've formed at Portfolio Center? You will find other people that are more ambitious, more talented, and harder working than you are — and they will make you a better person.

6. Describe the atmosphere of the school in one sentence. It is an irreverent, chaotic genius that encourages you to produce the best work of your life while pushing you to both your creative and physical limits.

7. What's the hardest thing about being a student here? Time Management.

8. What three adjectives best describe the experience of Portfolio Center? Eclectic. Exhausting. Empowering. (An alliteration that forms an onomatopoetic acronym describing the sound every student makes at least once a quarter.)

9. What is the most positive change you've seen in yourself since coming to school here? I've more thoroughly accepted my extroverted nature.

10. What do you look forward to most in your professional life after you graduate? Turning my favorite hobbies into a phantasmagorical machination that moves my bank accounts in a positive direction and makes me elated to wake up for work every morning.

Design Education, Custom Career

Another in our series on Entrepreneurship & Innovation

After finishing her design education at Portfolio Center, Lyerly Tuck worked on numerous 1996 Olympics projects for TW design in Atlanta, and then as the design director for Joey Reiman at BrightHouse. She relocated to Chicago with her 10 month old daughter in 1997.

She freelanced briefly but wanted to find a way to work and stay home to raise her daughter. One very cold Chicago day, she drove to the local fabric store, daughter in tow, bought some colorful fleece, unearthed her old Singer sewing machine, and channeled Matisse as she began cutting and sewing the first Little Moonjumper blankets on her dining room table.

The inspiration for her first blanket was a logo she created during her first quarter in the design program, when she was learning about directing a viewer’s eye around a page. The logo later became part of a class packaging project for kid’s pajamas, then inspired the illustrative style of her designs, and finally came to symbolize her whimsical brand.

A few months after she sewed the first one, the blankets made their way into a local store, Within a year, they were appearing in catalogs. By 2000, Little Moonjumper blankets showed up in the pages of InStyle Magazine, in the cribs in celebrity nurseries, and on The Today Show. With that exposure, production moved from the dining room to a factory, and Lyerly created her first website.

Since then Little Moonjumper blankets have kept babies warm on all corners of the globe. They have been featured in Child, Parent, American Baby, Westchester, BabyTalk, HG Kid’s Rooms, and Town & Country magazines, as well as on the sets of Friends, Sex and the City, Up all Night, and Parenthood.

Lyerly says that she’d never have had the confidence to create Little Moonjumper had she not gone to Portfolio Center: “On those dreaded critique days, I learned to be analytical of my own work, resourceful, confident and positive. In addition to teaching me the fundamentals of design, Portfolio Center taught me to be conceptual, to pay attention to detail, to have thick skin (which can be really hard with your own creations!) and to persevere. Thanks to PC I was able to take my love of design and build a small business that fit my life.”

Portfolio Center Student, Designer, Creative Mind

Natalia Ruiz talks about Portfolio Center

1. What is the one thing you would say to a prospective student about why they should come to Portfolio Center? Portfolio Center changes your life and your perspective about yourself.

2. Can you think of a quote/statement/truism a teacher here has said to you that has made a difference in your school work or life? "The goal is not only to create pretty things to get people to buy them; the goal is to create something that will be beneficial for the people.” (Hank Richardson)

3. What is your favorite thing about being a Portfolio Center student? The school is small, intimate, you know everyone and that gives you a great opportunity to collaborate with other students

4. So far, what has been your favorite class? Why? Any class with Hank. They are very challenging, but at the end you feel very proud of yourself and the projects you got from his classes.

5. What would you say about the friendships you've formed at Portfolio Center? I am so grateful for the people I've met at this place. Many of the friends I've met here are now like family, and I know all the relationships that started at this school will continue for a lifetime.

6. Describe the atmosphere of the school in one sentence. Creative energy flowing everywhere.

7. What's the hardest thing about being a student here? Long hours.

8. What three adjectives best describe the experience of Portfolio Center? Intense, Dynamic, Innovative

9. What is the most positive change you've seen in yourself since coming to school here? I've grown so much as a person, as a Designer and Creative Mind. Now I listen to myself with more respect.

10. What do you look forward to most in your professional life after you graduate? Helping people. Designing projects with consciousness that can create awareness.

Michelle Matthews’ Autotrader Rebrand

Autotrader, owned by Atlanta’s Cox Communications, has rolled out its new brand identity. The identity was designed and managed by Portfolio Center alum Michelle Matthews at top branding and design firm Lippincott. Michelle is a partner at the firm, creating experiential design for global companies. “The new identity evokes a fresh optimism and confidence that speak to the company's passion for cars," she says.

Prior to joining Lippincott, Matthews was an associate creative director at the firm Siegel+Gale, where she specialized in layered brand experiences for many leading companies and organizations, including CooperVision, HP, KAUST, Mount Sinai, and the YMCA. Before that, she was a design director at FutureBrand, where her clients included iconic brands such as Aflac, Care, Intel, Marriott, Microsoft and UPS.

Read all about Autotrader’s new look here.

Entrepreneurship & Innovation

by Kim Freeman

After several years as a copywriter at NYC ad agencies, then Atlanta and Austin, I heard a radio interview with a missing persons Police Bloodhound handler who began tracking lost pets.

I took her training in 2006 and am now a certified lost pet tracker. I developed a speciality in lost cats and have helped people via feline profiling, my online booklet, and in-person searches all over the world.

This is now my full time job; I quit my day job three years ago for this work that reunites people and their pets.

In the last few years, with this intense focus and additional study in cat behavior, I’ve become the most successful lost cat recovery expert in the country. At last, I have work that is truly rewarding, gratifying, and best of all, helps animals.

I have to be my own copywriter, marketer, and designer, but friends I met at Portfolio Center have helped me with the book cover design, business cards and so many other aspects of this new business.

And writing my own book—well, my Portfolio Center education came in very handy for understanding copywriting and SEO techniques as well.

Entrepreneurship & Innovation

By Elizabeth Perlman

Two years ago, I was able to fulfill my dream of creating an educational nonprofit for girls. My organization is called The Intuitive Writing Project.

The Intuitive Writing Project facilitates curriculum-based empowerment programs for teens, teaching everything from intuitive development to media literacy. We use writing as "a way in," helping girls discover their strengths and realize their capacity for leadership. By graduation, each girl emerges with not only an exceptional writing portfolio (so important, that portfolio!), but also a greater awareness of who she is, what she stands for, and what she wants to create in life—both for herself and the world.

I first wrote down the idea for this program over fifteen years ago, shortly before I decided to attend Portfolio Center. At the time, my parents thought it was an impractical idea and suggested (rightly so) that I develop some "marketable skills" first. As a very right-brained, creative person, it made sense to go to PC. Although it took me two and half years to complete the design and art direction program, I learned so much about building brands and telling visual stories. For the last fifteen years, I have been honing these skills, while also working (slowly, arduously) on my own personal development.

Two years ago, I completed my Masters in Transformative Arts, the study of how creative expression is vital to our growth and healing as human beings. It was through this program that I figured out how to connect the dots, how to combine my love of writing and storytelling with my passion for empowerment and paradigm-change.

Now, amazingly, I am the "Executive Director" of my own vision. But so much of what makes our organization successful—particularly when it comes to our "Educational Boutique" in Orinda, CA—is the design, advertising, and brand-development training I first cultivated at Portfolio Center.

Through the Intuitive Writing Project, I have been able to combine all my passions, strengths, and skills. But I am forever grateful to Portfolio Center for what it taught me about telling meaningful stories and designing my own authentic life.

Our Director of Design: Hank Richardson

Hank Richardson is the Director of Design at Portfolio Center. He is an AIGA Fellow and recipient of the New York Art Director’s Club 2010 Grandmaster Teacher’s Award. He is a Director of the Museum of Design Atlanta and has served on the AIGA National Board and Board of The Society of Typographic Aficionados.

Hank advises student leadership teams designing for start-up companies, exhibits, and products in live-client classes. He has worked with industry leaders from The Coca-Cola Company, Georgia Tech, The Centers for Disease Control, and The Museum of Design Atlanta, among others. He has contributed to several books about design and cultural criticism, including Design Wisdom, The Education of a Graphic Designer, Becoming a Graphic Designer, Design for Communications, The Education of a Typographer, Graphis, and Teaching Graphic Design. He travels widely, speaking at universities, and conducting workshops and seminars at conferences around the country.

As an educator he brings strategic design thinking into his teaching, integrating design, business, and technology. He is an avid believer that design creates culture, and he expects designers to take that responsibility seriously. His students inhabit the most respected corporations, design firms, and advertising agencies in the world — living testaments to his ability to nudge each student to a personal threshold where their best work is conceived. His mission is to produce the best designers on the globe. As a student recently summed him up, Hank designs designers.

Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Karen Alpert

After copywriting for almost fifteen years, I had a baby. I quickly realized that working at an agency was going to take me away from my child, so I decided to start freelancing. It paid well but the projects and clients were less exciting than they were when I was a full time employee, so I started a blog called Baby Sideburns where I could express my creativity. It was just your average Mommy blog. I tried to make it funny and honest and about how difficult it is to be a parent. In November of 2012, my Facebook page had 170 followers. I felt pretty good about that. It seemed like a decent number.

Then on November 26, 2012 I wrote a blog titled “What NOT to F’ing Buy My Kids This Holiday.” It went viral with over 1,000,000 views and over 200,000 likes on Facebook. I was turning forty the next week, so it was really good timing. My Facebook page started to gain about four new readers a minute. It was insane. I kept writing like a crazy woman trying to make the most of the momentum. After A LOT of hard work and a few more viral hits, today I have over 235,000 readers.

Every day I was posting 3-4 funny posts on my Facebook page, something I definitely learned how to do from advertising. My ability to punch out many quick creative ideas definitely started with my training at Portfolio Center. Also, PC always taught us how important it is to break through the clutter, and with literally millions of Mommy blogs in the world, that was a very important lesson.

Then in 2013 I self-published a book called I Heart My Little A-Holes. The first week it was out, it hit the Top 100 on Amazon as well as the New York Times Bestseller list. It was put up for auction and HarperCollins bought the rights to it.

I think what I learned at Portfolio Center and throughout my career in advertising helped the book become a success. During the launch I thought of creative ways to market the book that other people weren’t doing. For instance, I never simply asked someone to buy the book. Instead I thought of fresh ways to promote it to my large social media platforms. For example, instead of just saying, “it’s funny,” I would show a wet spot on the couch with the book next to it and I would say, “It’s so funny, it’ll make you pee in your pants.” In another promotion I created a fake newspaper ad about a woman who was carted of to the psychiatric ward because she couldn’t stop laughing from the book.

Today I am working on my second book, as well as making a living through my blog. I’d like to say it’s easier than the world of advertising, but there is a ton of pressure. In a way I’m my own boss, but really I answer to my readers. They are my client, and sometimes they love what I do, and sometimes they flat out reject it.

Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Shannon Kaiser

PC alum Shannon Kaiser (2004-2006) was just named one of the 100 Women to Watch in Wellness by Mind Body Green, alongside powerful women like Arianna Huffington, Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Shailene Woodley, and Jessica Alba. Here Shannon shares some of the exciting story about her journey from art director to entrepreneur extraordinaire:

I started as an art director working on Google in San Francisco, then moved to Chicago to work at Saatchi & Saatchi X. Five years ago, I left advertising to follow my heart and be a travel writer, author, and speaker. Today I run my own six-figure online business, helping people find happiness and achieve their full potential. I do this with books, coaching, meditation albums, and online courses. My company is Play With the World. I started the website and wrote two bestselling books on happiness. My next book comes out this August with Random House/Penguin.

I had no idea I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I left school, but my Portfolio Center education was essential for launching my own business. Everything, including the website design and courses, was designed by me. My education at PC was so important to helping me learn critical skills to help reach the right people through effective design and smart copywriting.

This week I am speaking at Nike world-wide headquarters to 200 employees on how to leave a powerful legacy. What’s ironic is that I used to want to work at Nike, and now I work with them, speaking at companies--my dream job.

Entrepreneurship & Innovation

by Emelie Soderstrom Griffith

While I was a student at PC, I started to freelance. I had all my marketing materials ready to roll upon graduation. I never wanted to work for anyone else; I wanted the flexibility to travel and live life on my terms. I used any and all contacts and followed up on leads that led me to contracts with corporations like Kimberly Clark and Coca-Cola. I did market research and product design ideas for Kimberly Clark. At Coke I designed graphic packages for clothing using old artwork that I modernized, but I was also asked to design jewelry for several target markets, including a high-end line. The jewelry was produced, though often differently than I had imagined, and distributed globally and also sold at the Coke museum shop in Atlanta.

Fast forward a few years, and I took a leap of faith and moved to Boulder, Colorado. A husband and identical twin girls later, I was at a loss about how to move forward with doing what I knew how to do while being a mom full time. My favorite project was designing jewelry. I knew how to design but not how to make the pieces, so my husband signed me up for metalsmith classes at the local college. Having a background in branding, I knew what I wanted as the core values of my company and how to visually represent them. Being able to edit my own photographs, showing extreme attention to detail in how I manufacture my jewelry, and the little extras like the high-end paper that I use for my business cards, all help in representing what I want my jewelry line to stand for, both consciously and subconsciously, for the consumer.

I am about to revamp, rename, and rebrand LALA for Phase II as I roll out the full line. No small feat! But it’s a must as I plan to grow. Design and business go hand in hand, and I have hired a consultant to help keep it on track. Some of the most important things I learned during my PC days are not to undervalue my work, to pay attention to every detail, and to do what I am most passionate about. It just about always works out…even if I have to push through the hard times to see what it may become.

Introducing our Director of Illustration: Theo Rudnak

Theo Rudnak is a man of many talents; he is a sculptor, an illustrator, and a fine artist. His award-winning editorial illustrations have appeared in many of the world's premier periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, Dartmouth College, Der Spiegel, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Newsweek, The New York Times, Paris Match, Playboy, Readers Digest, Time, and The Wall Street Journal.

Corporate clients have included IBM, Simon and Schuster, the National Football League, Sony, and Little, Brown and Company (for whom he illustrated book covers for James Patterson's best-selling novels). He has consulted for Academy Award winning director and American Zoetrope studio founder Francis Ford Coppola. He also produced television programming for several ABC-TV affiliates.

Theo is a member of the Society of Illustrators and has received recognition from American Illustration, Communication Arts, Graphis, Print, and the Society of Illustrators’ annuals. His paintings are in the Smithsonian Institution's permanent collection, as well as several private and corporate assemblages.

An alumnus of The Cooper School of Art, Theo has taught at Portfolio Center for nearly three decades. Now, as Director of Illustration, his goal is to navigate through the trivial and merely aesthetic "picture-making" by expanding the role of the "new illustrator.” To accomplish this, he has students work cross-platform within all the departments of communication. They interact with photographers, writers, animators and digital technology, not as competitors, but as an additional resource.

Theo takes his cue from designer, author, and educator Steven Heller, who prescribes “...expanding the role of the illustrator into social commentators and critics, as well as inventors and innovators, and ultimately independent thinkers..."

Alumni Spotlight: Craig Evans

Craig Evans is the oldest of five, and the only boy. He is a true Southerner, born in Atlanta, raised in Spartanburg and Charlotte, and educated at The University of the South. After college, he took off to Jackson Hole and various towns in Colorado, where he spent four years snowboarding, fly fishing, and drinking. Having gotten that out of his system, he returned home to Charlotte, worked a few different jobs to save up for grad school, and moved back to his birthplace to study design and art direction at Portfolio Center.

After graduating from PC in 2006, he got his first job as a junior art director at Arnold, in New York, working mainly on Hershey. A year-and-a-half later, he moved to the West Coast for another job, working on the NFL for a small firm in Los Angeles. While in LA, he met the woman who is now his wife, a woman who, oddly enough, also grew up in the South. The couple moved back to New York, where he worked for McCann and then for Wieden + Kennedy, before moving back again to LA, to work for Deutsch.

Craig has created and produced advertising campaigns for the NFL, NFL Network, MLB, NBA Nike, MasterCard, Volkswagen, ESPN, and more, including a Super Bowl commercial in 2010. Now he’s a Creative Director, still living in LA, with his wife Megan and a dog named Hawk, a rescue from South Carolina.

In 2014, he launched a Southern lifestyle brand called Y'allsome, selling shirts, hats and prints that he designs. All the products are made using Southern businesses, and fifteen percent of sales goes to help Southern foster kids find permanent families.

About his experience at Portfolio Center, Craig says, “Besides learning the craft of design and advertising art direction, PC also instilled in me an ethos that led to the creation of Y'allsome. It taught me that our work can also be a chance to do good. Y'allsome is the incarnation of this idea; I’m using my design and branding skills to help Southern businesses and Southern kids.”

PC in Graphis New Talent

Portfolio Center has won SEVEN places of honor in the 2015 Graphis New Talent Annual. Congratulations to Erin Bishop for her Cormac McCarthy book covers; Allie Hine for her portrait photographic series; Sharion Biggers for her Alexander McQueen packaging; Sam Kelly for his Selfishness chair; Amanda Brennan for her Rabbit Run trilogy book covers and for her Regret Me Not wine bottles; and Britney Kidd for her Oneiric photographic series.

The Graphis New Talent Annual showcases the year’s best student work from all over the world. It is considered the greatest resource for design and advertising firms seeking young creatives, and Portfolio Center will feature prominently.

Thanks to all our winners for making us proud and for setting the bar once again for Portfolio Center students coming up after you.

Artists at Play

Portfolio Center's open studio, Life-drawing sessions are held on Tuesday evenings, 7p-9p. These sessions are open to professionals and students. The fee for non-Portfolio Center students is $10 to cover the cost of models. They are sponsored through the school's Illustration department and are facilitated by awesome faculty member, Brian Stelfreeze.

Stelfreeze is a painter, penciller, inker and colorist and has worked for nearly every major American comic book publisher. He has the distinction of painting over fifty consecutive BATMAN: SHADOW OF THE BAT covers. His other covers for DC, Marvel, and various other publishers are beyond the ability for most people to count. He has, over the last few years, turned his attention to sequential storytelling, turning out books like DC/Wildstorm’s MATADOR (with collaborator Devin Grayson), and is currently art directing Image Comics/12 Gauge.

For more information, contact Theo Rudnak, Director of Illustration at Portfolio Center: [email protected]

Introducing Our Director of Web Design: Peter Hobbs

Portfolio Center’s Director of Web Design, Peter Hobbs, was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he followed in his dad’s footsteps and earned a BS in engineering. However, he couldn’t deny the creative side of himself, which came to him via his artist mother, and he and his wife and kids moved to the States in the late 90‘s so he could study photography at Portfolio Center.

Peter still works as a commercial photographer, but he found a way to marry his artistic and scientific sides in website design and development. Of course, he was a natural. Peter has a holistic understanding of what it takes to deliver complete, engaging user experiences, from strategy and architecture to content, design and execution. He is passionate about creating websites that are visually stunning and user friendly.

He has done everything from restaurant design to healthcare, and even Portfolio Center's very own website. He brings this expertise to the classroom, where he mentors those rare brainiacs who engage left and right hemispheres equally. Peter has created a Web Design program that enables students to develop all the skills required to bring websites to life.

Those skills include the following: Design Fundamentals, Photography, Video, Illustration, Type and Interactive User Experience Design. Students also learn programming skills in the Front End Development of responsive Web Design, such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery and Wordpress. For prospective students who understand what all of that means (or really want to), he’ll make sure you’re prepared for one of the hottest, fastest growing, most sought after careers on this planet - the next generation of web innovators.

Finally, when not taking care of the students at Portfolio Center or a company's latest web needs, Peter can be found reading geek books on responsive design or getting his hands dirty building a deck or remodeling a room at home.

PC VIP's Speak at Emory

On Thursday, February 5th, Portfolio Center presented a panel on careers in the creative industry to students at Emory University. The panel included Hank Richardson, Director of Design at Portfolio Center; Nicole Riekki, Creative Brand Manager at Chick-fil-A Corporate; Michael West, Director of Photography at Portfolio Center; Tony Messano, Creative Director and Voiceover Artist; Juliet D’Ambrosio, Partner at Iconologic; and Theo Rudnak, Director of Illustration at Portfolio Center.

The event was arranged by Paul Bredderman and Beth White, with Emory Career Services. More than 60 Emory students attended. Thanks to Emory for hosting us and special thanks to our Portfolio Center representatives for being so generous with their time and energy. The event was a huge success, and the Career Services folks commented that they’d never seen so many students stay after to chat with panelists as they did that night.

This is just one of the ways Portfolio Center is reaching out to schools and businesses to promote the value of professional creatives.

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