UAA grad: 'You find design everywhere'

Four years and three months ago, Edmar Carrillo was settling into a new home with his boyfriend and taking Spanish, math and communications classes at UAA.

"First paper of the year and a presentable draft is due for peer edits tomorrow," he quipped on Facebook that fall. "How much is on the page? ¡Pagna es blanco!"

His life, then, felt much the same way. Now, Edmar is preparing to graduate with a bachelor's degree in art, launch a three-month internship at Spawn Ideas Inc. and enter the world with a wealth of experience gleaned during his days on campus.

His education came not only from classrooms, but from opportunities he created or seized along the way: Edmar designed graphics and marketing outreach for UAA Residence Life; created art for Anchorage's Pride Festival stage; taught Boys & Girls Club kids how to use point perspective to enhance their artwork; served as president of The Family-UAA's LGBTQ+ Club-and reached out through UAA's SafeZone program to raise awareness about LGBTQ+ issues and cultivate allies within the overall campus community.

Taking the next logical step

Edmar is a first-generation American, the son of parents who emigrated from the Philippines long ago. The family made its home in Juneau, where Edmar was born and later attended Juneau-Douglas High School and the University of Alaska Southeast.

He knew by the eighth grade that he was gay, came out to his friends in his freshman year of high school and came out to his family in his senior year.

"It took awhile for some family members to come around but since then, it's been easy," he said. "My family's been super-supportive, loving, comfortable with who I am. It's no different from being a regular person. I've had a boyfriend for the last five years-a good relationship, healthy."

Edmar attended UAS for a while, but didn't really know what he wanted to do in college, so he took a year off.

"I was trying to get a certificate to be a radiological technician," he said. "My mom wanted me to go into accounting because, she said, 'You're good with numbers.'" Then Edmar laughed: "I've never been good with numbers!"

He decided to travel, and journeyed to Australia for four months.

"Sydney is great, such a gorgeous city," he said. "Australia was nice and really welcoming, but it didn't feel like home, like Alaska."

Shawn and Edmar met in Juneau before Edmar flew to Australia and they grew a relationship. When Edmar returned, he visited Shawn in Unalakleet, where Shawn was teaching at the time.

"We did the long-distance thing for a time and it was good," Edmar said. "He had to come back to Juneau for the last half of his master's in Educational Leadership. Our meeting spot was Anchorage. UAA seemed the next logical step. "

Edmar didn't know, at first, what he wanted to concentrate on. A year and a half later, he decided to pursue a degree in art.

As co-editor of his high school yearbook, Edmar had learned how to use InDesign software, so the choice made sense. "Shawn said, 'You've always talked about how you like to work with Creative Suite, InDesign, make things pretty,'" Edmar recalled. "I ended up taking digital art and design with Mariano Gonzales. We were working with Photoshop, painting with pixels. It felt right, and it felt good to be working with computers again doing digital art and graphic design. I took intermediate graphic design with Ally Tomi; I think it just opened my eyes to how expansive the world of design is. I've grown to really appreciate it."

He's since learned about metalsmithing and jewelry, black and white photography, aesthetics, drawing, 3D design, and progressive levels of graphic design and typography.

Now Edmar sees the world in a completely different way.

"You find design everywhere," he said. "This poster? I'm looking at the kerning of the type, trying to name the fonts, figuring out why this person composed this poster with a coffee cup at the bottom and can see they're using the two-thirds rule. It's just these little things. It's fun to look around and realize someone had to make that at some point. Whether or not they constructed it, they had to come up with the idea of how it would be implemented."

Through his internship, Edmar is seeing more of the structure and psychology beneath the work artists create.

"We have to make sure our designs fit and will work in the real world," he said. "Graphic design is a service to people and industries that need to communicate their ideas or their products. There's so much visual noise out there. Finding something that stands out, that solves a problem, that a client needs, is our goal as graphic designers."

Expanding horizons

Edmar has-for now, at least-completed his studies at UAA. He offers advice for students just beginning their UAA careers: Get a job on campus, and take courses outside the scope of your chosen degree.

Though he didn't live on campus, Edmar worked for Residence Life for more than two years.

"I applied to be the SafeZone project coordinator but I think what they realized is that I was talking a lot about how I would market posters with them, how I'd approach the look and feel of SafeZone, all that jazz," he said. "Then someone said, 'Hey, this graphic design position is open in the office; would you want it?' Yeah, sure! So I hopped on that summer. It was awesome."

Edmar says an on-campus job connects you to a variety of resources most students wouldn't necessarily come in contact with regularly.

"As commuter students, we go to class right on the dot-if a class starts at 10, we're there at 9:50 and right after class we leave," he said. "Having a job on campus, I spent more time here, met more people doing similar stuff, met a lot of student leaders who are fantastic at what they do-sometimes intimidatingly so. It encourages you to be like, yeah, I can totally do this."

His other piece of advice: Stretch yourself academically.

"I hear a lot of my classmates gripe about taking lower-division classes that are totally outside their scope," Edmar said. "Me, I didn't enjoy math, per se, but I understand why it worked. I found the communication classes were extremely useful because as a designer, we're designing things to communicate with the world around us."

Anthropology was another class outside his customary field of study.

"I've noticed in the professional work, there will be a lot of people talking about random little things," he said. "I don't know why, but Neanderthals came up the other day. I was just, oh, I know what those are. Little things like that, they expand your mind and help you recognize there's a world outside yourself. We're all part of this moving machine. I saw it specifically when talking to other people outside my profession-how do you talk to them, how do you relate to them. Upper-division classes help you see those connections a lot more."

Edmar says having an extensive field of reference enhances his potential as a designer.

"To make competent designs, we have to do research," he said.

Recently, Edmar received an impromptu assignment that involved students rebranding certain local businesses.

"I got Summit Spice & Tea Co.," he said. "I didn't know much about tea except you put it in hot water and it dissipates."

Edmar learned that the business offered an introduction to brewing class.

"The person offering the class was so informed about tea; I didn't know it was this big of a deal," he said. ""I didn't know there were specific brewing times. Being able to absorb information from others who are experts in their field is very valuable. It really expanded my mind."

That class inspired him when it was time to begin creating his assignment.

"I used watercolor texture as one of my design elements," Edmar said. "I thought of the idea of like, the way watercolor works is that it dissipates in water, the pigments do-it kind of spreads. I imagined tea does that, too. I had this idea of the swirling. I'm taking watercolor stuff and implementing that in a design for tea. I don't think there's a logical step, but it made sense."

Written by Tracy Kalytiak, UAA Office of University Advancement