Our winter break is going so fast! Before we know it, we will be back to Marywood and back to all of the hard work of the spring semester. For now, we are all trying to enjoy the time that we have with our families. I love break because I get to spend time with my younger sister Pia. We are only a year apart so we are very close and we both go to Marywood. But, with both of our busy schedules, we do not get to see each other a lot. We have a lot in common but our majors are really different! She is a early childhood education major which is very different from graphic design. We are always trying to find things that connect our majors together though; I think this is because we want to find ways to help each other out in the future.

One thing that we love to do that connects both of our majors/later professions is buying and collecting children’s books. As soon as Pia decided to be an education major she started collecting books for her future classroom bookshelves. I just think that you can never have too many books no matter what career you go into! We love to go through and pick our favorite books, mine are often the ones with the illustrations, fonts, and page layouts I like the best. I love to look at them because you can tell that the artist also had fun making them.

I think it is good to make these kind of connections not only because it brings you closer to family and friends but also because it shows you how to make connections with graphic design. One thing a designer must do is be able to understand their client. Learning how graphic design can relate to many people and things helps you begin to learn the empathy that a designer must have sometimes.

And who knows, maybe one day Pia and I will be writing, illustrating, and designing books of our own!