The Velvet Type

An introduction to the girl behind the words, the camera, and the occasional creative identity crisis.

I’ve never been particularly good at answering the question, “So, tell me about yourself.”

Not because I don’t have anything to say. Quite the opposite, actually. I usually have about seventeen different answers, depending on the day, the mood, and whatever new interest has managed to occupy my brain that week.

It actually started as a school project during my undergraduate years, the beginnings of what was supposed to be a virtual portfolio. And while having a portfolio is practically a necessity for anyone pursuing a creative career, mine was, well, boring.

No, seriously. Nobody wants to scroll through an infographic a 20-year-old made about some imaginary scenario.

At least, I certainly didn’t.

I wanted something that felt like me. Something that could hold all the different things I loved without making them compete for space.

Which sounds simple until you actually try to do it.

How do you capture an entire person in a website?

We’re layered, complicated creatures. If I wanted to explain every interest, thought, experience, and peculiar little habit that makes me who I am, we’d be sitting here for hours. Possibly days.

And even then, I’d probably remember something else halfway through.

Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring my own personal branding. It’s funny because I’ve studied communications, worked with brands, developed content, and thought about how organizations present themselves to the world.

But applying those same ideas to myself? Suddenly, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

What style do I gravitate toward? What colors feel like me? Which fonts make me want to stop scrolling and actually read something?

I found myself thinking about the things I’ve always loved.

The deep green of evergreens beneath an overcast sky. The dark blues of the ocean. The understated reds of ripe cherries.

But also the softer things. Wheat fields blowing in the wind, warm sand beneath your feet, the quiet simplicity of a blank canvas.

I wanted something that felt rich without being overwhelming. Thoughtful without being overly polished. A little vintage, a little romantic, and just imperfect enough to feel real.

Eventually, I stumbled across Oxford red, which, obviously, was to die for. I knew I wanted something creamier than white, which led me to the very color sitting behind these words.

And then came texture.

Paper, linen, grain, the little imperfections that make something feel as though it’s been touched, held, or lived in. There’s something fascinating about creating digitally while trying to capture the feeling of something physical.

As though reaching toward the screen might somehow let your fingertips experience what your eyes are seeing.

And somewhere in the process of putting all these pieces together, I realized that the question guiding my creative decisions wasn’t really about color, typography, or composition.

It was something much simpler.

It’s a question that’s followed me through just about every creative interest I’ve ever had.

I’ve always been drawn to emotion. Not necessarily in the dramatic, crying-over-everything sense (although a devastating book or movie has certainly gotten the better of me).

I mean the feelings behind the things we experience.

Why does a particular photograph make you pause? Why can a few carefully arranged words stay with you for years? Why does a certain song bring you back to a moment you thought you’d forgotten?

A photograph can communicate something words struggle to describe. A video can bring an experience to life. A beautifully written sentence can make someone feel understood by a person they’ve never met.

Different mediums, different methods, but they’re all reaching toward something similar.

Connection.

And that’s where my interest in communications really comes from.

Of course, there’s strategy involved. There are audiences to understand, messages to develop, and goals to accomplish. I’ve learned how important those things are through my education and professional experiences.

But what interests me most is the why behind it all.

Why does one idea resonate while another gets overlooked? What makes someone stop scrolling? What makes a brand feel familiar, a photograph feel nostalgic, or a story feel personal?

What are people feeling, and how does that feeling shape what they do next?

Those questions are what make the work interesting to me.

For years, though, I thought I needed to pick just one way of exploring them.

Give me a mood board, a collection of half-formed ideas, and a little creative freedom, and I’ll happily lose track of time.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about taking an idea that once existed exclusively inside your head and turning it into something other people can experience.

Something real.

My professional experience might be summarized through job titles and neatly arranged résumé bullet points, but those don’t always capture the curiosity behind the work.

And I’ve come to realize I don’t need them to.

I can enjoy writing without being exclusively a writer. I can love photography without needing to spend every day in a studio. I can work in communications while still exploring the dozens of other things that interest me.

I don’t need to turn every curiosity into a career to justify having it.

That realization has been surprisingly freeing.

Especially because, for a long time, I was afraid to share the things I created.

I’d have an idea, get excited about it, spend hours bringing it to life, and then hesitate when it came time to actually put it into the world.

What if people didn’t like it? What if they thought it was strange? What if it wasn’t good enough?

It’s funny how easily we can convince ourselves that the opinions of people who haven’t even seen our work should determine whether we share it.

But I’ve started to understand that creating something isn’t always about the reaction it receives.

Sometimes it’s about the process. The satisfaction of following an idea through. The excitement of discovering something new about yourself along the way.

And sometimes, if you’re lucky, something you’ve made reaches another person.

Maybe it’s one thoughtful comment. Maybe it’s a conversation that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Maybe someone sees a photograph, reads a sentence, or watches a video and recognizes a feeling they couldn’t quite put into words.

I think that’s pretty special.

Which brings me back to The Velvet Type.

I don’t know exactly what this little corner of the internet will become. Right now, it’s part portfolio, part creative archive, and part collection of all the things that keep my curiosity alive.

There will be photographs, stories, experiments, ideas that work, and probably a few that don’t.

I’ll keep reading books, watching devastating movies, exploring new places, experimenting with designs, and coming up with ideas at wildly inconvenient hours.

Some interests will stick around. Others might fade, only to be replaced by something I haven’t discovered yet.

And I’m okay with that.

I spent a long time thinking I needed to find the one thing that defined me.

But maybe the point was never to find just one.

Maybe it’s to keep collecting the pieces and see what kind of story they make.

The fleeting curiosities, the unexpected passions, the things that resonate so deeply they bury themselves in my bones and become part of who I am.

I’m made of everything that’s ever sparked something in me.

And I hope I never stop finding things that make me feel that way.

Signing off,