Chapter 1: In the beginning…
Emily Hunter – Child Rock Star
My name is Emily Stooksberry. Born Emily Lee Hunter, raised in Birmingham, Alabama by not one but two accountant parents. To this day, they still don’t know where their “creative” child came from.
I grew up in the small town of Alabaster, where instead of Alabama red mud, your car ends up covered in Lime Stone from the nearby quarries. The local high school was like any other school in the deep south, the students lived for football season, and the opportunity to smash rival teams to bits. Thankfully, there was also an art department – with not one, but two teachers, an art honor society (I was the secretary), a kiln, two studios, and best of all – field trips. I loved art class. Painting with oils, drawing with charcoal, pottery, sculpture, and all the other messy mediums.
Chapter 2: Enter the Designer
Once I graduated I tasked myself with proving to my father that not all artists are starving. Enter “Graphic Design.” I applied for the BFA program at UAB and excelled. I had a wonderful internship with a small ad agency and another at a video and post-production studio. I worked on staff with the UAB Recreation Center and built a brand new website to match the spectacular building in 2004.
Since earning my diploma I’ve taught myself what CSS really is, how to build a dynamic website with PHP and how to leverage jQuery and Ajax for seamless user experiences. I also found, and fell in love with WordPress. Nearly 10 years after graduation, and 444 miles from home, I’ve gone from being a fresh faced graphic designer to an independent contractor and web design consultant serving clients from the east coast to the mid west.