How did Young Guns get on your radar?

I honestly can’t remember! I think it was in college — it’s a time when students start to be exposed to the design world and begin to work out their sensibilities and what kind of work they admire. I feel like I kept finding creatives whose work I loved, and a common denominator was that they had become a Young Gun at some point.

It continued after college too; creatives I really admired kept receiving this honor. My first impression of it was related to seeing people I felt were outstanding talents win it. It must mean that it was one of the highest honors you could receive as a designer. To me, if you win it, you join a group of your heroes and inspirations.

How did you end up in the creative field?

I’d like to think I organically gravitated towards being a creative. I always liked to draw, and the natural step for me to pursue a creative degree was to go to art school and major in design.

Part of it was a fear if I’m being honest — I didn’t think I was good enough at fine art to pursue that, even though that was all I had really done in high school. I’d like to think I was lucky that I didn’t try to pursue fine art, because I was right that I wasn’t that good at drawing — and lucky that I ended up loving graphic design.

We’re expected to make choices about our interests so young in college, and there was no way to know if I liked design, except that I worked on a literary magazine in high school. That might have been more telling than I thought, because I continued to gravitate towards editorial design in college, and after college. I couldn’t get enough. I felt hungry to work, but also learn from the people and places that I had admired so long.

Why did you decide to enter this year?

I entered last year too!! So if you’re reading this after having entered before, do it again!! Overall though, I had known about this competition since college, and it was on my list of dream goals to achieve since graduating.

I could have maybe entered earlier than I did, but one of my favorite quotes from an interview was from Kate Elazegui, who was design director of NYT Opinion at the time. She spoke honestly about how although there were earlier opportunities to join NYT, she felt she needed to grow more. The concept of knowing yourself and your work — and knowing when you aren’t ready to take a swing at something yet — really stuck with me.

Every year I would critically look at my work and decide if it was time to enter yet, and most years it was no. However, last year I felt I finally had a body of work that felt ready. Being a finalist last year was incredible — it felt like my hard work had paid off and people had noticed it. So when I didn’t win, I knew I’d try again.

I think one of the better things I was able to submit this time was some examples of working with more restrictive brand guidelines and working on a redesign of one of the sections of Businessweek. It showed growth through my visual restraint.

“It showed growth through my visual restraint.”

You only get to submit six projects. How did you decide what made the cut?

My knee-jerk was entering the most recent projects I had worked on. Some of that stayed true — I do think recent work can have the advantage of feeling most evolved to one’s practice. However, there were some older works I decided to enter because they felt important to understanding the kind of work I make as a whole.

I’d say if possible, pick projects that are diverse, either in medium or client, to show breadth — and projects you feel represent you and what you’re capable of. I chose to enter some quieter design works this year, because I felt like it rounded out the more expressive works I had in my submission.

What was your reaction when you found out you won?

I was on the train heading to work when I was just instinctively refreshing my email and I saw it. I hadn’t had my morning coffee yet and I was in public, so I feel like it didn’t even fully hit me until later lol.

I called my boyfriend first. He’s not in the creative field at all, but he knows all about this competition from me — he calls it “the cube.” I called my mom after. I told my dad last, but only because he’s not good at keeping secrets and I didn’t want him to tell my mom before I could! I get my terrible secret keeping skills from him.

It was a great day. I celebrated with my boyfriend later that evening, but weirdly enough I like that I had work that day. It was like, “Ok I did it, now let’s get back to making the work that got me here.”

In what ways does where you’re living right now inspire your creativity?

I definitely don’t take advantage of living in New York enough. I think what’s currently keeping me creative are my peers. There’s just so much talent out there, and my coworkers are proof of that.

This year especially I’ve leaned on them, and they’ve made me a better designer — not just through the work, but with how to handle different situations and pitch my ideas better. And then beyond them, so many other editorial designers that I know are constantly inspiring me with how they think about their work.

Now that you’re part of the Young Guns community, are there any past winners you admire?

Oh yeah, so many. Rattling off some: Ben Grandgenett (YG15) bengrandgenett.com, Chloe Scheffe (YG17) chloescheffe.github.io, Bráulio Amado (YG13) badbadbadbad.com, Talia Cotton (YG20) taliacotton.com, Kurt Woerpel (YG20) kurtwoerpel.com, Khyati Trehan (YG19) khyatitrehan.com, Leo Porto (YG17) portorocha.com, and Tala Safié (YG18) talasafie.com to name a few!

I’m lucky to know and have worked with some of these people too, which is so cool to me. Ben, Chloe, Kurt, and Tala have had a huge influence on me on how to think about editorial design. Bráulio and Khyati are such creative swiss army knives to me — I feel like they do so many different kinds of illustration and design work and it’s all so strong. Leo Porto, beyond being a master of branding, has had such success starting Porto Rocha — to be so young and such a titan of the industry is really admirable.

If you could create a new Young Guns tradition, what would it be — and why?

Young Guns portfolio reviews or school visits? It would be really cool to have ways for the community to get involved with education and students. I’m new to this community — as in, I just got here haha — but I’d still jump at the chance to be able to talk with past Young Guns.

Name a dream project you’d love to do next. Who would you want to collaborate with?

I’m lucky because I get to work on a long existing publication like Bloomberg Businessweek, and one that’s very new like Byline. I think it’d be really cool to either revamp/revitalize a long existing publication, or work with a long existing brand on developing a publication.

So many institutions and brands are making their way into the print world by releasing magazines or limited editorial runs — I’d love to help brands bring those to life.