Meet Heather Lobrigo in Surprise

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Lobrigo.

Heather, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I had a bit of a late start if you could say that. I was always one of those people who would say, “I can’t draw a circle to save my life,” funny enough I have programs to do that for me now, but I never thought of myself to be all that creative until my junior year in high school. I needed a class to fit into my schedule so I decided to take digital communications where they taught us how to use Adobe products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign.

And I fell in love. It was the class I looked forward to every single day, I felt as though I was actually learning something and something was coming out of taking this class. I was creating fun graphics and illustrations. I’m really thankful to my instructor, Mrs. Hinde, who encouraged me to go all out and later invited me to join Yearbook my senior year. It was here that I got to make spreads for certain weeks and helped make infographics when needed.

When it came to college, I was dead set to major in Graphic Design, so I ended up pursuing my major at Northern Arizona University. Since then, I’ve been practicing my skills and growing more as a graphic designer and illustrator. During my sophomore year, I really got into user experience design, I was interested in it because of all the layers involved in it and always tried to show off a bit more when presenting.

I eventually got to join the user experience team here at NAU as a student designer. I’ve had so many great and wonderful experiences since joining. I’m excited to see where my current path will end up taking me after graduation.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s actually been pretty smooth for the most part, my parents were accepting of me going on to pursue this career. I’ve been lucky enough to score the job I currently have and continue to have great opportunities come from my job.

Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
A lot of what I do is inspired by eastern culture, being that I’m Japanese and Filipino and even lived in Japan for four years of my life. Being able to put the love of my culture into my designs really set me apart from others. A lot of my work is filled with bright colors that I hope convey optimism and positive outlook on encouraging all cultures to be more intertwined with our lives.

I also take a lot of pride in my user experience design. It’s fun and interesting being able to design multiple layers of screens that are all focused around the user. You can easily get lost in your aesthetics and completely forget about the interface. It’s good to keep an equal balance between them it’s very yin yang in that sense.

User experience design is so constrained, but equally fulfilling if you got the basics down; I hope I can continue to learn as much as I can because it’s an evergrowing field from wearable UX design to exhibition UX design. It seems endless and I’m super excited about that!

What are you striving for, what criteria or markers have you set as indicators of success?
I like to define it as what makes people happy, I think with a lot of my work has a happy feel to it. Most of all though I think my success is strongly correlated to my happiness. So, as long as I’m happy designing for hours on end, I would say that I’m pretty successful in what I do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hml837.wixsite.com/mysite
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happyberrydesigns/

Image Credit:
Sylvia Xuexin

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