Danielle Whitis

Senior
Visual Communications Design
Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts

“I had this ideal image and it was just a lot of the same work, so now I know I need a little diversity in my work"

What is your dream job & what do you want to do after graduation?

Well right now being an in house designer for a company where I get to work on a variety of different things. For a while I really wanted to work at a magazine, but then I had an internship at Rodel Runner’s World this past summer and I realized it was not what I had in mind. I had this ideal image and it was just a lot of the same work, so now I know I need a little diversity in work. An in house designer gets everything from emails to brochures to pamphlets to presentations for both in house and out of house. There are so many different things for example, a law office wanted a designer because every company has a brand and I know they’re going to need a brand manager so that’s something I could do. That would be a kind of interesting work environment not being around all these creative individuals.

What's your greatest strength? 

Hahaha, I’m excellent at watching Netflix. An example would be sophomore year, I thought "I’m going to watch the series Charmed." I started watching it right before Thanksgiving Break and I was done on the first day of winter break – all seasons, all episodes. I passed all my classes and still got As though.

What's your greatest weakness?

Self-control. That applies to cakes and ice cream. I did sign-up for a half marathon though, the Purdue one on
October 17th. I signed up for it at the beginning of the school year, so we will see.

If you could travel anywhere where would you go and why?

Ireland. I have a fascination with castles and there are a lot of castles in Ireland. I think I might treat myself after graduation and go!

What are you the most proud of?

Well, just recently - and this is going to sound horrible - I gave a girl legs in Photoshop. It was for the Goldusters poster and there are 16 girls on this poster and they all took individual photos. One of the girls decided she was going to kneel in her photo and none of the other girls did. She had one picture with her pom poms standing so I took her real legs from another photo and put them on the photo of her kneeling. So, I’m like a plastic surgeon. 

If you could have personally witnessed something what would it have been?

Maybe some of the big design moments in history: seeing Paul Ran design some of his IBM logos and seeing his thought process behind it and the “I heart NYC” design. It is so simple, so it would be cool to see how that came about.

What would be the first thing you’d buy if you won the lottery?

A trip to Ireland.

What makes your resume stand out?

It's yellow! There's a banner up across the top that is yellow, and the skills bars are yellow too.

What are you currently working on?

Currently I’m working on an infographic project. We got to pick our topic but it had to be something related to health, culture, or society so my topic is calories in food and how long it would take you to work them off.