We recently asked our graduates to tell us what’s new with them. Here you can read about their work, and more generally, about their lives since graduating with a Design degree. Use our alumni update form to tell us what’s new with you.
Interests: Interiors, Furniture, Architecture, Graphic Design, Art History
Design alumna Morgan Simko began working for an architecture firm in Northern California doing drafting and interior design immediately following graduation. She works in both AutoCAD and Revit building construction documents for healthcare facilities, as well as creating color boards and making finish selections. She is also building her portfolio to apply to grad school for interior design.
Diane Wu graduated in Interior Architecture and Design with a Civil Engineering minor in Sustainability. Upon graduation, she served as a Green Building Analyst at the UC Davis Energy Conservation Office where she earned her LEED AP and led energy conservation initiatives to LEED certify campus buildings including Hutchison, Mrak, and the Math Sciences Building. In 2015, she returned to her passion in interior design and designed corporate spaces for clients including Netflix, Tesla, Santa Clara State University, and various tech firms in the Silicon Valley.
Design alumnus Randall Hom is a product designer at BetterWorks, helping design an enterprise goals platform that drives companies to become operationally excellent. After exploring multiple disciplines of design—print, motion graphics, web—he found himself in product design working with startups around Silicon Valley. He enjoys how designing for software products encompasses so many facets of design: UX, UI, interaction, visual design, motion graphics, user research & usability.
Interests: Product Design, UI Design, Visual Design, User Experience
Alyssa Murray is a Product Designer at Highfive, a startup company based in Redwood City. After exploring a number of design disciplines, Alyssa graduated with a B.A. in Visual Design from UC Davis. She moved to San Francisco and began working at various companies, including freelance work, which helped to build her portfolio. Alyssa specializes in UI design for web and mobile, visual design, user experience, user testing and copywriting
Adam Taylor is the graphic designer for the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. With a background in visual communication, and a predilection for creating narrative environments, his freelance work comprises brand development, set design, environmental graphics and exhibition design for cities, museums, non-profits, and universities. He has studied architecture and design in Denmark and Iceland. Design Interests: Narrative Environments, History & Theory of Design, Urban Intervention, Wayfinding, Typography.
Alumni Nora Cary recently left a graphic design and editing job to remodel an 1893 house in downtown Winters. She is planning a trip to Paris, raising a two-year-old and expecting another child October 2015! She always has plenty of design projects going on and is currently working on a collaboration with a painter to design clothing with her hand-painted fabrics.
Living in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. My roomates are 2 other UCD Design graduates! While they are in tech and graphic design now, I am launching Catbird’s new website as their Project Manager, and integrating it with an e-commerce inventory management system and POS for our retail store on Bedford Avenue in the heart of Williamsburg. If you check back in a few months, www (dot) catbirdnyc (dot) com will be brand new and more beautiful, and hopefully function 10x better than it does now.
Design alumnus Dennis Robinson graduated in Visual Communications and Design. Since graduating, he moved back to SoCal and worked as a graphic designer in the manufacturing and medical fields in addition to doing a bit of freelance work. One of those freelance gigs led to his job as Chief Creative Officer for a start-up vending company formed by fellow Aggie Erica Harris that provides healthy, all natural, and organic snacks as well as eco-friendly products for children 0-5 years old.
Allen Tram is a dress designer within the fashion industry. After graduating from UC Davis he moved to Los Angeles to start his career in fashion where he worked at BCBG Max Azria and KELLWOOD. He then moved to NYC to persue his dream of working with designer Thom Browne. Following his time at Thom Browne, Allen began working at New York and Company; a wear-to-work retailer for women. To expand his experience in dresses Allen designed evening dresses for Kay Unger New York. He is now taking all of his experience to enhance the dress business at White House Black Market.
Interests: Graphic Design, Architecture, Fashion, Art History
Design alumna Li Lai completed her undergraduate degree in Fashion and moved to New York City, working various internships until falling in at Victoria’s Secret where she worked as a print stylist. Five years later, she attended the University of Edinburgh for an M.A. Textiles degree where she explored her affinity for Graphic Design. Back in the States, she moved to Chicago and is now working at a marketing agency as a graphic designer.
Interests: Fashion and Costume Design, Wearable Art
Design alumna Rebecca Wendlandt has a custom fashion and costume design business that she runs out of her home. She started her business in Fall 2006 and has been doing custom design work and sewing as well as teaching private sewing lessons ever since then. She also continue to create wearable art for exhibitions and competitions. In Fall 2014, her piece “Water Dancers” received an honorable mention in its category in New Zealand’s 2014 World of WearableArt Awards Show. She traveled to New Zealand to see the show in September and was able to receive her award in person.
Interests: Professional Portrait Photography, Music production, 3D explorations with Cinema 4D
Here is what I am doing these days:
Art directing and managing Apple’s worldwide App Store Content Design Team. If you shop for Apps on the App Store on iPhone, iPad, or Mac you have seen my team’s work. We create conceptual artwork to highlight editorially-chosen themes of Apps for consumers to browse, shop and easily find what they need.
I got married a year and a half ago, and my wife and I just bought our first house in San Jose! We are very excited and looking forward to starting a family.
Eloise Leigh is currently living in Berlin and “soaking up this side of the planet.” She is a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, mainly for print clients in publishing and music. She reports that she is also involved with community radio and alternative zine/art/music events, and is becoming more and more interested in teaching children. But most of all, she is “traveling as much as possible!” Check out her website at www.eloiseleigh.com.
Design alumna Leah Huntsinger is currently employed by Christy Rilling Studio, a high profile tailoring and custom design Atelier/Agency. As part of her job, Leah works with celebrities, fashion magazines and production companies, fitting and tailoring clothes for events, advertisements and editorials.
Design alumnus Derick Daily is the Creative Director at Spring Studio, a User-Experience Design Boutique in San Francisco. (http://www.springstudio.com). He oversees a team of 6 Art Directors and they build digital experiences ranging from websites to mobile applications and everything in between. Spring has deep expertise in the Financial Services sector but work with clients in all industries.
We want to hear the latest news from all Design faculty, students, alumni and staff. Tell us about your upcoming events or shows, or let us know about your recent job promotion, award received, publication, or other news of interest to the Design Department and community.
Please fill out the form, including the event date as appropriate. We will only share your contact information if you check the “yes, share …” box.
What are you doing these days? We want to hear about your life since you graduated with a Design degree. Are you working, attending grad school, or starting a family? Please fill out this form to tell us about your travels, accomplishments or future plans. If you have a website we would like to post a link to that as well.
