My name is Alyssa, I am a 21 year old, type one diabetic, studying graphic design at Towson University. In 2018, I was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes. At the time, I was 16. Because of getting such a drastic diagnosis at that age, I realized nothing is promised and that I needed to live my life to the fullest. I had always been a concert goer and it was something I really loved to do, so with that being said I started going to concerts all the time and by the end of this month I will have been to 47, which is insane. I actually have 2 more to attend this month, one being Tate Mcrae and one being the Jonas Brothers. So far, I don’t have any more planned for later this year but I do have some ideas of shows I want to go to next year! The first concert I attended was High School Musical live on tour. The most recent concerts I attended were Bazzi, Jingle Ball, where I was lucky enough to go backstage for a special artist experience hosted by iHeartRadio where I met my favorite artist, Tate McRae, as well as Ruel and Morgan Wallen. I have seen some artists multiple times! But the artist I love seeing the most is Post Malone. Since concerts are my favorite hobby, I end up on websites like Ticketmaster all of the time. I genuinely hate how Ticketmaster works but I do love their site itself.
My love of concerts and my diagnosis made me decide I wanted to be a graphic designer! My dream job is to design album covers, tour posters, merchandise, and screen visuals for artists like the ones I see in concerts! Things like concert posters could end up displayed on Ticketmaster which is a dream of mine. Having something I designed on a website viewed by millions everyday would be so cool. I did an album cover redesign for Bazzi in my typography class and I hope one day I can be a sole designer for something like that. Something else I would love to do is design for diabetes awareness companies like Beyond Type 1, run by one of my favorite singers Nick Jonas, who is also a Type One Diabetic. After realizing another diabetic could be so successful, I realized I wanted to pursue my dream career. Which led me to decide to study graphic design in the state I am from at Towson University. I met some amazing people here who will more than likely be some great connections in my field of work. This university is super close to Baltimore and Washington D.C., so there are also tons of professional opportunities and connections to build in my field all around. Something else that was very appealing to me about this school is that it is only a 3-and-a-half-hour drive from NYC. Which is one of the places I could totally see myself working aside from Nashville.
As of this point in my design career, I am in my first semester of senior year and should be graduating in the spring with a BFA in graphic design. I completed an internship for The Shark Group, run and founded by the people’s shark, Daymond John from the hit TV show Shark Tank. Over the next two semesters I get to take classes that will complete a lot of graphic design-based knowledge, and also take classes that allow me to learn more about web design, like this one. Which will make me much more well-rounded as a designer. I can’t wait to see where my degree, experience, and knowledge from Towson University will take me. You can find some of my work on the my website created in Design for the WWW I here. But you can also locate some of my favorite more recent pieces below.