Colleen Flemming traces her own path to graphic design

Senior Colleen Flemming sits at her desk, spreading out the sheets of binder paper before her. One page is covered in her short, linear handwriting. The one next to it is filled with her bubbly cursive.

“People hate doing notes, and I think it’s so much fun because I get to write letters for hours,” Flemming said. “I probably spend more time focusing on how my handwriting looks than the actual notes, but I love writing.”

Flemming, who changes her handwriting each month, has a passion for all things graphic design. After realizing she struggled with creating realistic portraits, she turned to art forms that include typography, logo design and line art.

“I decided that I couldn’t draw things that looked real, and so I got really into drawing things that just came out of my head,” Flemming said.

She prefers intricate and time-consuming art because it soothes her. Last year Flemming did a project on her own about pointillism, which involves using tiny dots of paint to compose one whole picture. She chose to form a flower by painstakingly using the bottom of a toothpick instead of specialized tools.

“I do really tedious art all the time, and I take a lot of time with the stuff that I do,” she said. “I honestly get sad when I finish pieces. I wanted to keep going with the [pointillism project], but there just wasn’t any more space on the canvas for it.”

Flemming never took professional art classes before her art elective this year; instead, she has learned by looking at other artists’ work and “just trying over and over again.” She especially admires the graphic artist Erik Marinovich because he has designed for brand name companies like Nike and serves as a model for what she wants to do in the future: graphic design.

“When I was considering career options, I was trying to think of something that I’ve always had in my life, and art’s been something that I’ve always been doing,” she said. “I may not always be taking a class, or drawing all the time, but it’s always something I’ve gone back to. You’ll always find drawings in my notebook.”