website design :: about adel

Editor, Copywriter, Designer
Okay, I have a confession. I’m a little obsessive.

I really, really wanted to be one of those loose and spontaneous artists, a little giddy and on the edge of out of control. Well, I can do giddy. Sometimes. The rest is a stretch: I’m an editor. A first-born. I do copywriting. I like systems and predictability. I am fond of rules, regulations, schedules. I adore dictionaries, grammar books and encyclopedias.

And I design? Yep. Design is a solid, thoughtful way to communicate. Color, shape, repetition, contrast, alignment. They can tell a story, give meaning, offer a message. (Even without an editor or writer on board.)

I earned a degree in English in the very fine, if somewhat lilty-voiced state of Minnesota. I lived and breathed literature, pored over long and disturbing Faulkner-esque paragraphs, Hemingway’s toned and sturdy descriptors, the wink of just the right word from Kurt Vonnegut.

As an editor and a copywriter, I copyedited periodicals, textbooks and educational newsletters, worked in-house as a university editor and wrote for an advertising agency and good-cause businesses and organizations.

A few years ago, I returned to school for one class and ended up staying three years, studying visual communication: web design, graphic design, digital illustration.

I wanted to be able to translate, and integrate, what I know about how good writing works into how good design works.

So I write. I edit. I design. I find myself sighing over a beautiful K or the sweep of color on a page, a photo placed just so. I have shelves upon shelves of computer reference books, design annuals, color guides, dictionaries, novels, poetry books and thick anthologies, centuries of good literature. And to relax, I still read grammar books before bed.