Jennifer Thackham: Alumni Spotlight

Tell us about yourself

I’m Jennifer. I originally have a bachelor’s degree at lander University, with its visual arts with an emphasis in graphic design so I’ve been doing graphic design off and on for about eight years.

What made you want to enroll in the MASD program?

I was the type of person who never wanted to get my master’s degree at all I didn’t really see a point in it before. My mentor design teacher Jim Slagle at Lander University and I just met the right people. I met Ross and I met Hank as well and they were super great because they told me a lot about kind of what I can do with design. I had never done things like business classes or philosophy classes with design.

As somebody who just really loved design and was a creative person, I also needed to learn other stuff. That was really good for me especially even with like getting my parents on board with it being able to be taught by people like Ross and Hank. Both of them were fantastic educators and were really helpful with taking design from something that I kind of thought was like a “pretty picture” fun thing that you can do and turn it more into conceptual storytelling, which now is kind of my whole thing as a designer.

How has the program helped you?

I grew as a designer and I also grew as like a logistics strategy person as well. So with the design charts specifically all the teachers that I’ve ever had will really push you to get very personal with things and make sure that you’re really trying to get to the core of what design problem you’re going for and being very vulnerable with it.  I think that’s the quality that the design track has because you’re able to really push yourself to not only come up with concepts but also to get into what that core problem is.

What are you doing now?

I’ve been given so many wonderful opportunities to work on some amazing things with LUCKIE Not may designers can say that they got to work on a project with the Dalai Lama! I’m so thankful for everything I have learned with (Hank) and everyone else there at M.AD, it has given me such a leg up in providing work for my team.

What would you tell other considering enrolling in this program?

If anybody’s wanting to get into this program who does not necessarily know that this is something that they should do, or they’re kind of on the fence about it, just know that is something that I also struggled with. I was the last person in my family who people thought would even go to college.

Now I have a Master’s, I’m living in Atlanta, and I pushed myself a lot further than people ever expected. There are so many fantastic designers who start out exactly the same way you do. You’ve just got to kind of just take a leap of faith and say “You know what? I know that I can do something really great and I know I can really make a mark on whatever field that I want to go into… so I’m going to do it!”

Then just don’t look back and do it.