Melanie Rankin: Alumni Spotlight

Master’s Student, and Graphic Design USA “Student to Watch,” Melanie Rankin discusses her time in the Strategic Design program and how it took her from a general business background to her dream job!

 

 

Tell us about yourself

I’m Melanie Rankin and I am now a double Furman graduate. I went to Furman, for my undergrad degree in business, and then found myself back at Furman for the master’s program. The business program was a lot of what I focused on my senior spring semester. I  had some free electives, and I decided to take an advertising/design class. That was my first and only experience in the art department at Furman.

Why did you enroll in the program?

The biggest reason I even chose the program was because it integrates design, business, and communication. Long story short, I had to test a bunch of different things before I could fully commit to this program but I’m obviously very happy that I did in the end.

Which design track were you in?

I came into the program in the (graphic) design track. I definitely thought that I was going to play a lot of catch-up and spend a lot of extra hours learning things, but the good part about our cohort is that it became very easy. If I didn’t know something, or some function in one of the design programs, I can easily feel comfortable reaching out to another classmate and be like, Okay, how do you do this specific thing? and they’d be happy to teach me. For me, it was best to learn the programs and the principles of design because I didn’t have that background coming into it.

Where do you work now?

The company is called Principle in Houston. We do a lot of branding work for different companies. In three months of working at Principle, I’ve been able to touch five or six different clients and many different projects within those clients. It’s been really fun to be able to do so many things in one position.

What would be your advice for those considering enrolling in the MASD program?

You have plenty of time to decide so take the time if you need. It’s also important that if you have that gut feeling, or anything to just take the leap and trust yourself and trust the process that, amazing things will come out in the end and that’s also a really important thing.

Take that leap, take the opportunity, take the chance and you never know where that’s gonna lead.  For me it’s led to pretty awesome things so it’s been worth that risk.