Who I Am

Personality Animation: ‘My Stick Life’

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Biography

Personal Biography

In 2008, I began studying the public's relationship with journalism.

For the last several years I've focused on trying to solve journalism problems. As a designer, photographer, writer and public journalist, I spend most of my time contemplating the future of journalism and evangelizing about reinventing journalism on my blog, in forums and to colleagues.

My two encounters with IDEO working on a Knight Foundation News Challenge and a Future of Journalism think tank, helped me realize I like to design with more than text and photos. Instead, I like to build a user experience around information.

I faced a new set of challenges in an attempt to expand my skills and perspective. As a grant assistant, I found ways to design Adobe Flash games for NASA. Though rooted in graphic design, this opportunity allowed me to break into usability and interaction design.

Because of my approach to design, I won the Pulliam Fellowship in 2008 and spoke about design's connection with readers at the Society for News Design Annueal Workshop in Las Vegas. There, I also won 'The Intern' competition and was awarded a Poynter Fellowship. Immediately following my visit to The Poynter Institute I participated in a similar fellowship with the Newspaper Association of America.

As I prepared to graduate, I find myself conflicted between print/web design and product design. My skills lie in editorial design but my thoughts lie in improving users' experiences. Though, I discovered editorial design is user interface product design so I've been doing both all along.

Now I work as an advertising designer and innovator at Swift Communications and it is suddenly lurching forward in interesting directions. Here, I find myself moving closer and closer to the yolk of it all.

If you have any suggestions about my future, feel free to contact me at mike@mikehigdon.com.

Awards and Honors

Awards

2009 Newspaper Association of America Foundation News Challenge fellowship (link)

2009 Poynter Fellowship

2008 Associated Collegiate Press First Place Infographic Design of the Year (link)

Fellow winner of ACP Pacemaker Award for The Nevada Sagebrush (link)

2008 The Intern competition

2008 Pulliam Fellowship at The Indianapolis Star (link)

2006-2007 Student Society for News Design Non-Daily Designer of the Year

A fellow winner of 2006-2007 SSND Overall Best Designed Non-Daily Newspaper for The Nevada Sagebrush

Various SSND individual page awards

Honors

Invited to speak at SND Vegas 2008 about:

Conversational Design: using page design, graphic and multimedia to start conversations and connect with a community (link)

Young Voices panel: using social networking to enhance the connection between readers and news (link)