How I got into Interior Design

When I was 18, I went off to college at UVSC - Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. It's now referred to as UVU - Utah Valley University. While I was at UVSC I took quite a few multimedia classes. That was 14 years ago so multimedia has come along way. I loved my college days at UVSC but mostly for the social scene. I enjoyed some of my classes at school but I wasn't prepared to really dig in. I received my associates degree from UVSC and transferred to BYU - Brigham Young University in the winter of 2003. I joined the department of Communications and declared my major as Advertising. For some reason I was eager to finish school. Looking back, I'm not sure what the rush was but I graduated 15 months later from BYU in April of 2004. One of my regrets is not doing the creative advertising track at BYU. I kick myself because my creative side for sure should have spent the time double majoring or getting a minor in graphic design. Instead ... I was off to the island of Hawaii. A few days after graduation I packed up my bags, got a storage unit in Provo and flew to Oahu with a few of my close friends. What an adventure, right? Only to return to Provo a few months later with no job and no place to live. I lived in a couple random places before I decided to move up to Salt Lake City to live in Sugarhouse.

I still needed a job and my dad taught me how to network. Its pretty safe to say I'm not really shy and consider myself and extrovert. I pretty much will talk to anyone anywhere and I needed and wanted a job in Advertising so ... I figured out who the top players were and I called them up. I asked for lunch appointments to get to know them and their firm better. I met quite a few people and was finally offered an internship at R and R Partners. See their website here.

Working for an agency in downtown Salt Lake City in an office that was located in an old historical home was pretty great. Although I was making pennies, it was still a foot in the door. They had some really great clients. The Utah Opera, The Utah Transit Authority (UTA), and Intermountain Healthcare (IHC).  I helped pick out billboard locations, write scripts for radio spots and helped pick photos for creative ads. It was pretty awesome.  I even was invited to the Holiday Christmas Party to the R and R headquarters in Las Vegas were we flew down for a quick 36 hours mini-vaca. We stayed in the JW Marriott and I even got to bring a friend. What a great time! Unfortunately my internship came to an end and getting hired on didn't work out so well ... so I went back to networking.

I networked into McCann-Erikson formerly Boede+Partners. They had recently taken on a portion of Microsoft's Small Business Account. I was offered a job as an Account Coordinator. I went from working in a large historical home in the Avenues to a large historical building in the middle of downtown Salt Lake City. Things were exciting as McCann was growing rapidly by the day and the Microsoft account was booming. Great people, great company parties, great lunches catered, free drinks, free candy, a boss that traveled a lot, but ... It was a tech account and I didn't really speak the tech language. I often felt lost and a bit behind. I enjoyed the agency lifestyle though. Production artists, copy writers, project management, account coordinators. I sort of got to work with all of them but I also felt like I was more suited in a smaller agency where I would get to be a bit more hands on with clients and accounts.

So I probably jumped ship too soon but I interviewed and was offered a job at Studeo. Also located in Salt Lake City but near the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon. Studeo has since dissolved. Although there were some pretty messed up corporate politics going on there it was nice when I needed another job. So to back up a bit, I got married right after joining Studeo in the summer of 2006.

My husband Ryan decided to apply to grad school in the Fall of 2006 and in the Winter of 2007 he was accepted to Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, AZ.  So I had only been at Studeo a couple months when I needed to move. Luckily for me, Studeo worked with a media buying agency in downtown Phoenix called RMG Marketing. So I finished out the year at Studeo and Ryan and I packed up and drove in a snowstorm to sunny Arizona where we would spend the next 18 months. Arizona was great! I had some really great co-workers who I still stay in touch with to this day. We met some great friends and really enjoyed living in that part of the country until summer hit. Oh boy ... it was HOT. Super hot and that summer was LONG!  Ryan LOVED school but also rushed through and graduated too soon in the rocky job market recession of 2008. Although it was rocky, job wise he decided to take an offer he had to work at an ad agency back in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Backing up even more! Before I got married my parents moved to North Salt Lake in the summer of 2006. I can't remember how but I met a woman my mom knew and went to her house. I remember her home was decorated super cute. She told me about the Interior Design Program at LDSBC. So before we ever moved to Arizona I had applied to LDSBC, got in and then turned it down because we were moving. So upon Ryan graduating from Thunderbird I knew if we moved back to Utah I could possibly enroll at LDS Business College in their Interior Design Program.

Ryan graduated in May and I wrapped things up at RMG. In July 2008 we left Arizona and were on our way back to Salt Lake City.

Another chapter closed ... the Interior Design Chapter was about to begin! www.christiluke.com