I am a Canadian, born and raised in Ontario, with a passion for the outdoors. The beauty of Canada’s natural landscapes paired with my Italian heritage has formed me into a passionate individual with strong values who is always seeking the next challenge and exploring the unknown.
This passion continues into my love of working with others. My ability to communicate is a strength which has helped me in every facet of my life. I credit my communication skills and empathy for others as the traits that led me to the field of design.
As a designer, I am passionate about solving problems and enhancing people’s lives. Being a designer gives me meaning and allows me to create and communicate through my work. Solving problems, helping others, while telling a story… that’s what I love to do.
Continuously Learning
As designers, we have a multitude of different applications and mediums that we can use to communicate our work and design thinking. I think of these different mediums as tools on a tool belt. Each one of these tools can be used on its own or in combination with another, to best showcase our thoughts and process. It is our job as designers to constantly evolve and learn. Continuously learning to upgrade our tool belt ensures we can communicate our thoughts, enhance our processes and work with others in the best possible way.
Virtual Reality
VR is a self-taught tool that I integrated into my design process during my final year of my bachelor’s. I became aware of VR and its growing impact on the design industry in 2021 and took the initiative to learn how to use VR and the application Gravity Sketch to build and enhance my Thesis Project.
The use of this tech during this intensive project and other personal projects allowed me to become proficient with the application to fully integrate it into my workflow. This integration into my design process allowed me to use it early in my career at Myant Inc.
Today VR plays a big role in my idea-generation process as it allows me to model (to scale) in an immersive 3D space very quickly. The spacial awareness this tool provides so early on in the design process is unparalleled. This tech has proven to benefit, my fellow co-workers and of course, the client.
The novelty of VR and its ever-evolving role in our industry has put me at the forefront of this developing tech, providing me with the opportunity to share my knowledge and skill set with fellow designers. Since learning this application I have conducted multiple webinars with designers, professors, and industrial design students. This has developed into creating multiple VR workshops where students learn and experience the tech for themselves.
Garment Construction
My fascination and interest in soft goods and apparel was sparked during my time at Humber where I had the opportunity to design and make a shoe. This exposed me to the processes conducted by apparel designers and gave me an understanding of creating flat patterns and tech packs. At Myant Inc, a wearable technology company, I have been further exposed to leading-edge knitting and textile development processes where I work closely with the textile team to infuse hard and soft goods to create bio-computing apparel.
This growing and ongoing interest compelled me to complete a Garment Construction course at Seneca College in 2022, where I learned how to use an industrial (Juki) sewing machine and serger. Throughout this course, I learned a multitude of different elements of constructing soft goods. The course allowed me to apply various skills including selecting different interfacing and working with the various structures and how to sew each one. I learned a variety of different seam and stitching techniques, gaining a solid understanding of how to best apply them. These skills were all demonstrated throughout the course, with the construction of multiple swatches, a shirt and a skirt with a waistband and pockets.
Moving forward I intend to continue learning about soft goods and their construction by taking courses and completing personal projects on my sewing machine at home.
Education
I completed a Bachelor of Industrial Design at Humber College from 2017 - 2021. My four years at Humber produced the most growth and development of self, character and identity I have ever experienced. The Humber College Bachelor of Industrial Design program is known for being very technically demanding and strenuous. The challenges of the program pushed me during my formative years as a young adult and helped me greatly improve my work ethic, determination and ingenuity which are abilities that I will carry forward into my career as a professional designer.
The skills and experience gained through the program allowed me to join Myant Inc. soon after graduating in 2021, kickstarting my professional career. Today I still find myself heavily involved with the Humber Design community as a Teaching Assistant where I am proud to help the next generation of designers develop and grow. Helping the next generation whilst sharing my knowledge with the community continues to be one of the most rewarding parts of my design career.
