You can’t deny that Sunflower Her is a creative. Whether she’s designing a website about her favorite hobby (fishing) or recreating the graphic design of a poster, every color choice, punctuation mark, animation, and font selection feels intentional. And beautiful! We’re sure that’s why she was recently awarded the prestigious PICA/Treadaway Scholarship for her accomplishments in the Digital Design program at Spartanburg Community College.

Despite this innate talent, you didn’t start off as a Digital Design student.

No. I attended Greenville Technical College in 2019 for Diagnostic Medical Sonography. In 2022, I got accepted into Phase II of the program, which accepts a maximum of 16 students per year. I would have graduated in Fall 2024, but due to a car accident that injured my arm, I couldn’t scan patients properly. I did some self-reflection and concluded that I only went into the health field for my parents, so I decided to drop out in 2023.

Did you immediately make the leap to Digital Design?

No. I initially thought I would become a wedding planner. I wouldn’t say that I have Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, but I think I have a little of it, and I imagined decorating and organizing weddings to perfection.

Unfortunately, I knew that being a wedding planner here in South Carolina wouldn’t make much money, so I started thinking about the characteristics of a wedding planner, and it took me to Graphic Design.

After researching and learning about what graphic designers do, I attempted to make my sister-in-law a personal calendar in Word. I had fun picking out fonts that would match her vibe, creating and aligning rows and columns, and placing graphics on the document. Designing the calendar layout felt like a very “me” thing to do, and that was the Aha! moment that helped me land on Digital Design as a career path.

Before I committed to this path, I would look at magazines and ads and think, I could design that better. But now, it’s not just magazines and ads that I look at. It’s everything in the world that I can see. When I go into the grocery store and look at the shelves, I recognize that every single label was designed by a graphic designer.

You say that your biggest surprise is how much you love being in this career – that you haven’t once dreaded going to class, that you’re always ready to tackle your next project. How has Spartanburg Community College helped with that?

I adore both of my professors; Spartanburg Community College has really outdone itself with Mr. Hoyle and Ms. Koch! And every single assignment in my Digital Design courses has been fun and challenging.

Mr. Hoyle takes his time teaching to ensure that every student understands the subject and assignment. For my final exam in his class last semester, I had to recreate a poster in Adobe Illustrator starting with a blank document. I had to match and create typography, colors, and objects using tools like the pen, brush, shape, type, line, and ellipse tools.

We saw your finished product. It was stunning – a near-perfect match to the original!

Thank you! It was one of my favorite assignments because we had to be creative about how to warp lines and create certain shapes.

And then there’s Ms. Koch. She has an energy that is welcoming and caring. She is always positive and gives good feedback on assignments. In her class this past semester, we had to create a website on the topic of our choice, and I chose mine to be about my favorite hobby – fishing. I liked this assignment because I got to share some information about myself with her and my classmates that surprised them.

We also took a look at your website, and you have some very impressive catches!

Yes! During my free time, I love to be outdoors. Fishing with my husband Ryan and my doghter is the description of a perfect day. We travel the state – from Lake Greenwood to Cheraw State Park – and I catch everything from largemouth bass and trout to striped bass, perch, and bluegill. After a good day’s catch, I love to cook the fish with vegetables in tin foil over a charcoal fire. I usually use worms and crickets for bait, but I do not touch the crickets! Thankfully, my husband puts them on the hook for me.

You also recently “hooked” the prestigious PICA/Treadaway Scholarship, a multi-year $2,000 award given to promising community college students by the Printing Industry of the Carolinas. Tell us about that.

PICA/Treadaway Scholarship applicants are evaluated in a blind process where the candidate’s name and college are omitted from the paperwork and the application is scored based on certain criteria. I decided to take my time with the process and be transparent about my life and goals. Being selected as a recipient gave me a boost of motivation to know that I am on the correct path. I felt like God gave me this as a sign to let me know that everything will be okay with my future and that the incident with my arm and dropping out of the Digital Medical Sonography program happened for a reason.

Thoughts about what you’ll do after graduation?

Initially, I hope to work with a company where I can focus on page layouts. After getting some hands-on experience, I want to become a freelancer. I like the idea of being my own boss. Controlling how and when I work is a privilege that I hope to have in the future.

I was always afraid to go into the business industry because I felt like I wouldn’t succeed. But now I realize that you don’t know what you don’t know. I interpret that as “You never know until you try, and as long as you’ve tried, you won’t ever have to question, ‘What if?’”