Season 4 - Episode 12 - Interview with Claudia Ortega-Lukas

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Wise Not Withered Podcast! This is Season 4, and we are on episode 12. This month's guest was Claudia Ortega-Lukas. She is a graphic designer. She shares an interesting story about how her job has evolved over the decades, as technology has also evolved. She shares her experience being a stepmother, and also her relationships with her own parents. She also talks about this duality of different cultures, two different worlds, which is actually how I found her, through an article she wrote a few years ago. In addition, she talks about her community, support system, and challenges she has overcome as well as what she is facing now.

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Thank you so much for joining the podcast! What is your age?

I'm 60 years old.

60. Okay.

Just turned 60.

Nice. When’s your birthday?

September.

Oh, September. Okay. Awesome.

I’m a Libra!

Oh, you're a Libra. Okay, awesome. Are you into astrology much?

Not really. I just thought I liked the, I don't know, I guess we're always saying, you know, what sign you are, but I'm not really into it a lot. I've read it every now and then. But yeah.

Mhm. And where did you grow up?

I grew up in Mexico City. So, well actually in a town called Texcoco. We were born in Mexico City and then shortly after I was born, my family moved to Texcoco which you know back when I was born, it was probably a whole hour drive to Mexico City. But now I think they're like, pretty much, you know, have touched borders.

Okay. And where else have you lived?

So from from there from just Texcoco, I spent a semester with one of my mom's relatives in Denton, Texas. And then we moved to Guadalajara when I went to college, and then when I was there in college, I was an exchange student at the University of Oklahoma. Norman, Oklahoma. And then, I came back for a short period of time and then I actually enrolled at the University of Missouri for a master's degree. And so I moved to Columbia, Missouri, to go to school.

Okay.

And from there, I got a job and Reno, and then I came to Reno and I was here working for their newspaper for two years. And then I got a job with another newspaper in Savannah, Georgia. And then I went there… And I worked there for another two years. But before I left, I managed to meet my husband. Well, you know, the guy who is my husband now. So, yeah, so I was two years in Georgia. And then I came back. We got married there and then came back here and settled in Reno.

Okay, so you're in Nevada now. Okay. Awesome. And what do you do for a living?

I'm a graphic designer.

Oh, okay!

That's why… Yeah, I think that's what I wanted to do since I was middle school, although I didn't know what it was. But, you know, I did my own collages for my binders and things like that. And so, by the time I was in college, I knew that that's what I wanted to do.

Okay. Yeah. And so take us through, like, what all does that entail? So, like making collages on your binder, then how did that translate into the work that you do now?

Well, I mean, it's basically just the, you know… When I was in middle school, it was just basically, you know, kind of making a collage of all of the things that I liked. And then in a way that I thought was, was nice looking. By the time I went, when I got to college, I started working at a newspaper. So I was going to school, from 8:00 to 1:00. And then I was working from 2:00 to 8:00 or 2:00 to 10:00, depending, at the newspaper. So I was doing layout. And that's when I realized that that’s sort of something that I really liked. And I think, working at a newspaper, when I was in college, was really sort of what got me into both technology, and you know, the… I was refining kind of how I was doing.

So basically, I was provided with all of the stories that had to be in on one page, or two pages, or the whole section. And then I had to use the photograph that I had available for each of the stories and I had to, you know, lay out a page that, would have a dominant element, a dominant headline, you know, had entry points would kind of guide the reader through it or tease the reader, you know, kind of thing. So, and then yeah, and then that's basically kind of what I did, I did that when I was all the way through school. And then when I move to… When I got my masters, my master's is in magazine and newspaper design. So basically, that was a little bit more emphasis on publication design.

It's different from… You can do a poster layout. But it's slightly different when you're doing stories. Because you know, in a poster you you have less elements, in a way, because you have very limited space to tease the reader into what you want them to read, or you want them to be intrigued. And with the story, it kind of goes on and on, you know, it's a longer piece. So you have to you have to design it in a way that the reader can… If they're just sort of glancing at the page. If the headline doesn't intrigue them, maybe the photo does, maybe the photo caption, maybe a quote, maybe some of the sub-heads, or you have like a little sidebar. And so, so that's kind of what I did mostly. When I came to the Reno Gazette-Journal here in Reno, I was doing just mostly one of their small publications, which was… It was sort of like advertorial, we call it, so it's like a mix of advertising and a mix of editorial content.

And then when I went to Savannah, I was actually the features and sports editor. And so just like, Design Editor. And so basically, making sure that all of the graphic designers that were doing those pages have all of the elements that they needed to try to make the paper and the stories sing, right. And so, yeah, I did love working for newspapers, you know, but then once I moved back to Reno, when Tim and I got married… The newspaper life is like, you work late, you work weekends, you know, it's just a little bit like, you don't have a lot of the normal hours, right, that people like to enjoy, like, you know, dinner time and things like that. (Laughs)

My husband has two children, two boys. And so when we got married, they were five, and eight. Five, and nine, something like that. And so he was like, you know, I think it'd be better if you don’t work nights. He’s like, I'd like to have dinner together, all together. And so I went to teach! I did a brief teaching at the university here. And it was still teaching magazine layout, basically. And then there was an opportunity for me to apply for a position for a full time graphic designer for the office of marketing communications. And so then that's what I started doing. I used to do the alumni magazine. And then in between just serving all of the different units on campus, or, you know, different design needs.

And the job has changed slightly through the years. You know, there's certain things that I don't do at all anymore. There are some things that I started doing to serve the web that I don't do anymore. And then I did a lot of stuff that was serving a social media, you know, and so I do some of it, but not as much. So it's just sort of like a little, you know, ebb and flow type of jobs, but all of them have been designed. Layout and design.

Okay. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about how things have changed?

Well, you know, for one, the newspapers have started to disappear. Right. And before the newspaper was sort of what you use as your trusted media, right. And so there was a lot of money spent in advertising, to create those newspapers. And when content online became much more, you know, more effective at penetrating the households, and everybody started going there, the advertisers used the money that they were putting into newspapers into the web. And so they strengthened their online presence. But if weakened the newspaper presence, and so then the newspaper start shrinking down.

Right.

And so, a lot of newspapers have folded, a lot of newspapers, you know, have gone from having five or six or seven sections to maybe having two. So that shifts to kind of what, for me… It was nice that like my private life sort of pushed me into getting out of that, into something else. The ones that they offer, marketing communications, is mostly to support efforts and recruiting for the university and to basically communicate with parents and alumni.

So even, you know, for us, we… There was a point when I when I was doing the alumni magazine. We were doing, like, six issues that year. And then he was like, well, we're gonna do four, well, we're gonna do two… And then I think at one point after I stopped doing it, he went to maybe doing it once. And then he was like, well, maybe two.

And so a lot of it has to do how people consume information. And more and more people are much more comfortable going online looking for the alumni news online, rather than having a magazine. Right? And so I printed magazine. There are other things that are still in place, because they are still effective, like, you know, we would produce postcards or brochures for recruiters to take to conferences, so that they can hand out to students, and parents, potential candidates. But even that, you know, sometimes it's like, they just have a big screen, and then they show them what they want to tease them with, right.

So yeah, so my job has changed due to the way people consume information. And information online, now, it's just so much more effective—or it can be much more effective. And easily accessible, right? One of the things that happened when you printed something is that we knew, the moment that we printed something, it was outdated by the next day. Right? So for example, a brochure nowadays. If we do something for recruiting, we can do a brochure, and we do our best to put all the information that we need and QR codes and things like that. But we know that information that is printed can change, right? There can be changes to scholarship applications, to deadlines, to anything like that. So the QR codes now that we add to all of our all of our brochures, postcards, things like that, is to get them to the website where we can update things as they happen.

Right.

So that that has also been one of the major changes, or one of the reasons why things are changing. Because on the web, I mean, if you change a deadline from this morning to this afternoon, you can immediately change it and anybody accessing the information at that point, they will have the correct information.

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