I’ve loved to draw for as long as I can remember. Whether or not I was any good was something I’d discover well into adulthood.
I could just let you look at my resume and read a brief bio, but that’s not very exciting. So here’s some tidbits:
My art story begins in high school. My dad got me into a newspaper class in 10th grade, and I was hooked. I actually wanted to be a reporter. I still regret ditching AP art for a newspaper class in senior year, but I was right in that journalism would get me scholarships. My dream of being a sports reporter came crashing to a miserable fireball of a disaster in college. Learned the hard way that you still have to have two sides to a story in editorials.
I received a life-changing gift from a college professor: a copy of Tim Harrow’s The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook and a copy of the 15th annual Society of News Design’s Best of Design award book. I still remember being mesmerized as I thumbed through the SND catalog’s rich content of beautifully designed pages. I would spend the next couple years at the University of Florida trying to learn as much as I could about newspaper design, which was mostly fiddling around at the student paper, The Independent Florida Alligator.
In my final year of college, I was named a Chips Quinn Minority Scholar and spent the coolest summer of my life as a design and graphics intern at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Imagine me as a young kid from Small Town, USA spending her summer riding a metro train every day to work at one of the country’s biggest newspapers in one of the most historic cities.
After graduating from the University of Florida (go Gators!), I went to the Baltimore Sun as a temp page designer. Best memory is teaching some of the sports copy editors how to use a mouse. Almost a year later, I landed a 2-year internship at the Arizona Republic. I happily packed up my car and my cat, and trekked cross-country to experience desert living. During my time in Arizona, I got to dive into infographics. The staff took me under their wing and taught me how to do simple illustrations, diagrams, maps, and charts. 9-11 was my crash course in working with breaking news.
I took a Flash course when SND held their annual convention in Phoenix, and instantly fell in love with making interactive graphics. My first piece was a simple cartoon of me driving a red Jeep across the screen in a beach setting. I later used that as the main page of my Flash portfolio, which helped land my dream job at the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Here I met my husband, who was also my mentor at the paper. I won several consecutive SND awards in infographic design including the department’s first infographic portfolio SND award (beating out the boys). I even spent a week at the sister paper The Los Angeles Times to help the staff cover these massive wildfires in 2006.
My time at the Sun Sentinel was magical. I became a 3D illustrator and dabbled more in interactives. But I really switched tracks and dabbled in motion graphics. I was inspired after watching the end credits of The Other Guys, starring Will Ferrell and Mark Walhburg. The animation explained the 2008 bank crisis in simple animations. I instantly recognized the impact that motion graphics can have in news storytelling.
I co-founded my creative agency KarBel Multimedia in 2008 while working at the Sun-Sentinel. Eventually I left the newspaper industry to focus full time on KarBel Multimedia. At KarBel, I have had the opportunity to drive visual solutions for brands such as Google, Kaufman Rossin, Stand Up To Cancer, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Microsoft.
I went back to school to study motion design and earned an MFA in Motion Media Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design. I’ve taught graphic design, multimedia design, infographics, and web design to undergraduate students at the University of Miami’s School of Communication. I’m now a part-time lecturer at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte, where I teach undergraduate courses in graphic design at the Department of Art and Art History at UNCC’s College of Art + Architecture. I’ve been a guest speaker and given webinars and workshops at organizations and colleges across the country.
In these past few years, I’ve started to explore who I am as an artist. I’ve reacquainted myself with drawing and dabble in illustrations. I’m exploring digital painting and continuing to explore photography. I love to draw with my kids, and encourage them to explore their own paths as artists. It only took me about 25 years to get real confidence, so I’m excited to see what the next 25 years will bring.