Alumni story: Emily Okey, RIT, '12
Emily Okey is a 2012 graduate of RIT where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design, but took classes “all over the place” including multiple School of Communication classes. She says she did this because although she was a graphic design major she knew she did not want to go into traditional graphic arts as a profession.
Now she is a Senior UX Designer at Carrot Creative (a VICE company) in Brooklyn, N.Y. where she works on digital strategy, information architecture. She describes her work as “if you think about building a house, I’m the person that makes the blueprint for the house.”
Knowing what she now knows Emily says if she could do her time at RIT over again she “definitely would have taken more communication and business classes” and she feels strongly that every student should “have a minor in some kind of communication” field.
One thing she recalls about her time at RIT was that everyone seemed to have a desire to learn noting that every student has their major, but usually also has a “passion project” or thing they love doing outside of their classwork.
Emily advises all students to “take any classes that interest you even if you’re not quite sure how it fits in.” She says this because she feels this variety of subjects will apply somehow down the road no matter what field students end up in.
RIT grad Emily Okey was interviewed at Carrot Creative in Brooklyn on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017 (while that company’s new offices were still under construction – hence some construction noise in the interview) by Mike Johansson, Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication.
Read the transcript
