Kathryn Thomas is a talented designer with strong organizational and leadership skills, seasoned in a variety of web technologies and systems, including HTML, CSS, and ExpressionEngine.
Part programmer, part artist, Kathryn believes that excellent designs are informed by the ability to command both aesthetic creativity and well-written code within a targeted, emotive narrative. As such, she loves baseline grids, collaborative environments, butcher paper, lines of code, and building site maps with three things: post-it notes, expo markers, and large windows.
In April 2010, the redesign of Cornish.edu became the focus of the web team (myself and web developer, Mark Kornblum), alongside other institutional pieces. Because of the outdated structure of the 2006 Cornish.edu design, we learned it was vital to restructure the information architecture of the website, along with doing a visual refresh.
Creative Healing is a family-run business located in Huntsville, Alabama that provides nutritional consults. In November 2009, the business was already two years old and had grown to the point of needing an online presence to direct potential customers to their store.
On October 28, 2009, Cornish decided to launch a new unified program that would market four of six main academic departments — Art, Dance, Design, and Music — as a single summer program targeting youth and pre-college students. The college also sought to add a small number of short, intensive courses aimed at adults interested in enrolling in an intensive course.
On April 27, 2011, a record-breaking series of tornadoes swept through the South, including an EF-5 tornado that devastated Tuscaloosa, Alabama — my home for nearly a decade, and the city in which my brother and a number of my close friends still reside.
As a new business, the Hastings Brothers Event Photography needed to establish a digital presence to market their product, allowing potential customers to find their services. They also wanted to incorporate their online store and create a cohesive branding identity existent in both. Another challenge was the desire to have a horizontally scrolling website to display large, dramatic photographs.
During my tenure as Web Designer at Cornish College of the Arts (October 2008 to present), I have designed and directed websites and other digital marketing materials for a number of uniquely branded events. In creating these materials, my goals were to find a balance between the needs of the client — to uniquely brand a specific event to stand out — and the needs of the college as a whole — to tie the event back into the branding of the college.