i’m danna.
(dah-na)
Do you like stories? I’ve got a good one. But long story short:
I’ve been described as “a creative type with her feet on the ground” and believe all design abides by the same core principles. The only variable is the medium.
Guided by the belief that design is worthless if it doesn’t function, I draw from my multifaceted experiences across industries, my research skills, and my storytelling skills, to get to the root of why and for whom we’re truly designing for.
And then I make stuff.
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From media and entertainment…
I started my professional career in TV development at Sony Music out of college. I turned into an ideas machine, cranking out new stories to tell and selling those stories to production companies. I learned how to craft ideas that would speak to different audiences, wrote show treatments, designed pitch decks and temporary brand identities for shows in development, oversaw and coordinated production. I even got a production credit or two along the way. But I craved more design, which led me back to school.
…to designing physical spaces…
I left media and entertainment to design tangible experiences used by real people via interior design. Studying interiors taught me that a design is only as good as it is functional, and your role as a designer is to be a researcher, psychologist, and visual problem solver all in one. I learned to understand people’s habits and motivations better than they do themselves and became a human behavior detective, learning to read the lines between what someone says and what was underneath, in order to pull the nugget of insight that drives the right design solution for a unique set of needs.
…to designing digital spaces!
That mindset informs my digital design work as a UX Designer and Researcher. Collecting data and understanding the “why” behind creative decisions was vital to crafting the right story for the right users.
And I just love uncovering those stories and making things that resonate with people.