Meet Hanna, Dowitcher’s Newest Graphic Designer!

We are excited to introduce our newest graphic designer, Hanna Lopez Petrini! As a recent graduate from the Graphic Design and Media Arts program at SBCC, Hanna brings boundless creativity into her projects and we feel lucky to have her. We wanted to get to know Hanna a little better and she found some free time between creative projects to answer a few questions for us.

What first brought you from Sweden to
Santa Barbara?

So I was getting cold in the far north and was feeling ready to leave Stockholm behind, but only for a little while. Luckily for me I had a close friend (Pernilla) living far away, in lovely Santa Barbara. I decided to come over to “visit” for a few months and take some classes at Santa Barbara City College, just for fun. After two months I had fallen in love with the town, a man and graphic design. So here I am over three years later!

How did you first become interested in Graphic Design?

I guess I have always been interested in Graphic Design, I just didn’t know that Graphic Design was a “thing” or a career choice. Layout and functionality have always been fascinating to me, like how a book gets its personality by the way text and images are combined. But it was not until I started taking Graphic Design classes at SBCC that I knew that Graphic Design was what I wanted to do.

What is your favorite part of designing?

I would say that my favorite part of designing is the combining of elements to make type, images, shapes, and illustration unite into one piece. I love trying to make organic lines or illustrations work together with the many rules of typography. It is like making a puzzle every day – I love it!

We’ve heard you’re a big fan of Pinterest, how has social media influenced your designs?

Well, I think I am just amazed by how many creative people there are out there! I think it is lovely to see what other people find attractive. I believe social media is a great way to keep track of the latest design trends. I think I prefer Pinterest because of the sites’ broad audience, you can really find everything from cute kitty images to flat web icon design or website grids. It is like a little design Google.

What’s your favorite color?

Tricky, I think I will pick all colors apart from brown, I really don’t like using brown in my designs or art if I can avoid it. I will, for example, even make tree stems look super cool in red or blue 🙂

What would you say is your most important design tool?

My brain?

If you could go on a vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Madagascar! I will answer this question with an image that says it all. Just too cool!

Wow, that looks like quite an interesting animal! Do you have any pets yourself?

I do! I have two lovely cats. They really are wonderful, despite that one of them will soon reach the size of a Bobcat and the other one does not know her name at age 1 1/2 haha!