Lucia Conchello is a talented and energetic designer who is always eager to push her capabilities. Her willingness to take on any type of job and develop it into the best it can be makes her a real asset to our team. Her extensive design expertise has helped SAC Designs expand our creative capabilities.

We recently asked Lucia to share a bit about herself and her passion for design.

You are a graduate of Mass College of Art. What classes there have most prepared you for the work you do at SAC Designs and why?

Web Design 1 and 2 are at the top. In these courses, I learned the basics of coding and loved it. Graphic designers typically work with developers to program design details for websites. With the knowledge I gained from this course, instead of going back and forth with our programmer, sending nit-picky designer notes like, “the leading on that looks too small, can you raise this two pixels, can you add a break point in the website,” I now have the ability to go into the back end of the site on my own, and execute precise changes to my liking. This saves time for me, for the programmer, and for our clients.

Information Architecture. This course taught us how to take massive amounts of data and other information, reorganize it, then display it for quick digestibility. This process is helpful for any design project … infographs, documents, PowerPoint presentations, websites, etc. This was an incredibly useful course for what I am tasked to do at SAC Designs.

Most of the typography courses. These classes prepared students to use type effectively on everything from print pieces to digital graphics. We were even required to lay out print and digital magazines, an acquired skill set which was considerably helpful when I recently had to layout a new magazine for one of our biggest clients. We worked on posters, books, articles, postcards, there was such a range. Most of the work I do at SAC is very text heavy, so these classes have been extremely useful.

What have been some of your favorite design projects over the past two years at SAC Designs?

Magazine design. Designing a magazine for our client ACI Worldwide – despite a really tight deadline – has been one of my favorite projects at SAC Designs. It was so different from our day-to-day work for this client who we typically create a lot of collateral pieces following strict style guidelines. This job allowed much more freedom in the design. And since it was their very first magazine piece, I was able to have fun designing the overall look and feel instead of working from a template.

View more of ACI Inside Payments magazine here.

Illustration. Also for ACI Worldwide, this little Delft-tile inspired icon project allowed me to draw something beautiful from scratch. The client was having a difficult time trying to achieve the look they wanted with available stock image options, so I created this custom graphic in Photoshop and they REALLY loved it. When the client is happy, we’re all happy at SAC Designs. This illustration was a proud designer moment for me.

Promotional projects. I really liked working on a couple of recent blog posts for SAC Designs featuring custom infographs that share interesting facts about random topics like the rise of Bitcoin and the history of Valentine’s Day. These illustrated infographs give me a chance to do something very different that’s not client controlled. I love the freedom of being able to determine the look and feel, the layout, the size, the content and even the subject matter. We also were able to break the infographic images out into bite-sized content and then share them on Instagram, too, resulting in a pretty cool creative campaign for me in the end.

Mass Tinting website. I had the pleasure of being able to design and code the Mass Tinting website from beginning to end. In doing so, I also learned a bit of SVG animation. Since coding is one of my favorite hobbies, and learning new things gives my soul life, this was a really fun project for me.

Shaw Turf Builder. I like UX/UI development and when our client Shaw Turf Builder asked us to redesign their virtual sports field configurator, I was very excited to watch the project unfold. Originally just Steve was working on it, but my designer senses were tingling and I started to look over his shoulder and found myself making comments, then sitting by Steve at his desk, drawing out wire frames on paper, and we quickly began working on the design as a team. This project is still under construction, but we plan to share it here on the blog in full as soon as it’s officially released. Stay tuned!

What are some of your non-design related hobbies?

I probably spend 50% of my free time watching movies and tv shows. This year I became a proud member of the Coolidge Corner Theatre and I have no regrets! Last month I went to the Coolidge EIGHT times. This month (July) they’re playing two of my all time favorite movies and I am so, so, so, so, sooooo, unbelievably excited! I will be seeing “Apocalypse Now” and “Yellow Submarine” (very different genres, I know, but that kind of explains my personality).

I love that movies showcase every single art form imaginable, along with relying on a huge range of professional talents from science, engineering, and I can’t even imagine what else. There’s architecture, interior design, fashion, writing, music, sound, the people who design better cameras and camera rigs, lighting design, pyrotechnics, choreography, the list is endless, really. When all of these art forms are taken seriously, and treated like the amazing, phenomenal, powerful forces that they are, magic is made.

Lucia getting into character at a Tim Burton Beetlejuice Rewind at The Coolidge, fall 2016

Favorite snacks?

Where do I begin? String cheese? French fries? Cheesy fries? Veggie chips? Pretzel sticks covered in Nutella? Lunchables? Mango Mochi ice cream? Cheese Pakora from the Indian restaurant downstairs? Baby carrots and garlic hummus? Chocolate anything? There are just too many options. I love all my snack-children equally.

What do you love about our Stoneham neighborhood?

All the food. No lie. We’re surrounded by great food in this neighborhood. And then there’s the Stoneham Farmer’s Market which sets up once a week on the common just outside our building, bringing all kinds of deliciousness to our life every Thursday afternoon in the summer. It’s the best!

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