Introduce yourself and give a brief overview of why you chose Columbia College Chicago. 

My name is Yari Montelongo, I’m a junior at Columbia College in Chicago. It’s my first year here as a transfer student, I come from College of Dupage. I went through the transfer program through Columbia, so that’s partly why I chose it. I remember one of the transfer guides giving a presentation at COD and just the way that they presented the program and showed off student work, I felt like it would be a good transition to go into Columbia.  

What’s your major and what are you hoping to do in your career?  

Right now I’m into general graphic design. I am thinking about starting off in web development. Oddly enough, I do enjoy coding. I know it can be very tedious for some people, but it’s kind of relaxing for me. Hopefully I’m going to start my journey there, but really I kind of want to do everything. I want to get into all kinds of media, not just digital, but things like printmaking. I’m really excited for those things. 

You’ve already acquired a client in your time at Columbia, could you tell us a little bit about that and how your time here has helped you with your career in freelancing? 

I am freelancing for Dig Design. The founder of Dig Design is Amy Decker, and she used to be a professor of mine at College of DuPage. Through the summer, it started off as an internship. This restaurant called Diverse Dining Market was opening up during the summer and we were helping launch that and spread the word. We really wanted to spread the mission of the place, and get people connected with them for the grand opening. It was originally supposed to be a short internship, just really something for the summer before I got started at Columbia. Now I work there full time as their Social Media Manager. I provide art direction and create all the digital content for their socials along with organizing a strategy for page growth. My time at Columbia has helped a lot actually with Assistant Professor of Instruction Calid Bowen because we go through insights and just try to look at the page every so often and see how we can develop a strategy for growth. He’s been really, really helpful, just in clarifying things and helping me my way through something that I’m very new to. 

Is there any coursework that’s kind of been beneficial to your career so far? 

Right now I’m taking an Experience Design class and it really puts a new lens on problem solving. A quote that one of my professors often says is ‘you have to live with the problem to find the solution’. This forces us to be more out in the field and talking with people, getting a new perspective on the problem that you’re trying to solve so that you can actually come up with solutions that are catered to the people you’re servicing. I love that quote. Especially with anything UX design or accessibility needs related, there’s a lot of things that as a designer you wouldn’t realize these are issues until you’ve actually experienced it. 
 

Are there any role models you have within the set industry that you’re trying to get into and why?  

So I’ve actually met two of my role models. One of them is Aaron Draplin. He is a graphic designer. The other is Neville Brody. Aaron Draplin and his approach to visual communication is very impressive. His portfolio is so immense and there’s just so much variety to his work that it really makes me think outside of the box generally when I’m trying to come up with something like identity design. Neville Brody has a really interesting approach to type, which is something that is not my strongest point working with typography so that’s when I look up to him. His work has been really notable and just you can tell that there was so much thought put into it. 

Yari is a recipient of the 2024 Chicagoland Transfer Award Scholarship. You can follow her work at https://www.behance.net/yaritzamontelo