We were lucky to catch up with Alyssa Nodorft recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alyssa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry.

Good advertising captures attention. Attention is captured by creativity. Brands must take their creativity to new heights in order to capture the next generation’s attention. Gen Z is all about unique, memorable, and user-friendly/focused experiences. We’ll pay extra for a cocktail if we know it comes with a “flair,” e.g. smoke or flames, or unique glassware that’s “Instagram-worthy.” We’ll appreciate a brand more if they put time into curating how they showcase their products—for example, on a restaurant menu—clever and creative names, easy-to-digest descriptions, and visualizations of what each item looks like makes the overall experience more enjoyable and convenient. This is an on-going, ever-growing trend that won’t fade any time soon, especially as attention spans become shorter and shorter. You can no longer just think outside the box; you have to throw away the box and create something completely fresh, digestible, and entertaining all at once.

Alyssa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a 25-year-old art director who is passionate about how brands can advertise in creative, distinctive ways in a quickly-evolving and ever-changing landscape. I graduated with a degree in advertising from Texas State University in 2019, and the world has changed drastically since then. We spent a lot of time online, consuming or creating heaps of content, drastically shortening our attention spans, and seeing ads between every few posts.

As someone who designs those ads, beginning at Austin-based agency Mighty & True and then working remotely at San Francisco-based agency Timelapse before transitioning into full-time contracting, I look at all advertisements, and designs in general, with a critical eye. I take note of which ones capture my attention, which ones actually make me look into the product, and which ones make me cringe. I look at the client and estimate how big their budget probably was, how well it paid off (or didn’t; see Pepsi + Kendall Jenner), and whether they’ve ran a similar ad before or if it’s something fresh and new.

I’m in an intriguing territory where the line between audience and advertiser blurs. And although I love most aspects about advertising, especially the emotional aspect of advertising (Google’s annual Year In Search never fails to make me tear up), I’m more passionate about design. Ads don’t matter if they’re poorly designed.

Design is one of the most powerful forces in our everyday lives. It communicates, affects our mood, influences decisions, and can make our lives easier or harder. I took my first graphic design class as a sophomore in high school, and excelled at it—my teacher, Mrs. Priesmeyer, hung my minimalist homecoming posters on the hallway walls. The theme for one particular poster was Nerd Day, featuring a simple illustration of glasses and a bowtie, with the theme and date written under it. The blank space made it eye-catching; with minimal content in the center, you automatically want to know what it says. It was easily digestible—an important factor for students walking quickly in a packed hallway. I was pretty proud of my “published” work, and continued improving my design skills until I landed my first official design job my sophomore year of college at Texas State’s LBJ Student Center.

I saw my designs hung up throughout the building. They expanded to the entire campus when I created fliers and merchandise for my friend’s Student Body President campaign. They went digital when I designed Snapchat filters for the library and student center, which are still published today and have garnered nearly 9 million views.

But my most recognizable design work has to be Popeye’s chicken sandwich packaging. In my last few weeks of my 8-month internship at GSD&M, a senior designer approached me, simply stating he didn’t feel like working on this project and had other things to focus on. Probably a pretty standard thought for a full-time designer at one of the biggest agencies in Texas who has a never-ending to-do list, but a thrilling opportunity for me, a design intern who had mainly worked on in-house projects during my internship as opposed to client work. I spent most of June creating the packaging, working off some already-existing designs and creating some of my own. I sent the final files over, and that day, I received my first job offer. I left GSD&M not knowing what the outcome of that project would be, but was excited nonetheless to switch to a smaller agency and get paid a salary.

In November, Popeye’s chicken sandwich was finally released, and I got the most exposure and kudos I’ve ever had. It was surreal to see something I helped create go global and land in the hands of million people (especially for something that’s delicious).

The fact that it came out months later helped me realized that good, rewarding things can take time. And excellent, high-quality things with huge payoffs *will* take a long time. That’s something I’ve tried to keep in mind as I now work on my business, Drip Hard Coffee. I came up with the idea in December of 2020 when looking for a drink at a gas station to take to a Christmas party. I was exhausted from work and had been drinking bottled frappucinos all week. Those were in the fridge right next to the hard seltzers, and I thought, “Why doesn’t someone make a spiked version of those coffees? That’s what I need right now.”

I decided to become that someone. If what I wanted wasn’t available to me, why not make it? I knew it was a huge undertaking, but after I came up with the name, designed the logo, and created the branding, I knew I had a viable idea that could go all the way if I stuck with it and didn’t give up. “Maybe by this time next year, I’ll have a product,” I thought.

Well, it’s been nearly two years, and I’m still in the midst of bringing Drip to fruition. As time passed, my initial mindset proved to be driven by impatience and eagerness to succeed quickly. I’m also a pretty fast designer, so I was used to getting things done quickly. But I had to re-teach myself the lesson I learned with the Popeye’s packaging: Worthy projects are a marathon, not a race. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Patience isn’t a virtue; it’s a necessity.

I try not to be too hard on myself, either. While my journey to becoming an accomplished designer/art director was a fairly smooth one, my journey as a female founder in the alcoholic beverage industry requires a completely different route to success. It has hundreds of different turns and de-tours I can take, all while using just my intuition and the resources I’ve acquired through dozens of hours of research. It can be frustrating to take two steps forward and three steps back, but that’s what happens when you’re building something like a 1000-piece puzzle or a huge Lego set: you have to remove some pieces you’ve already put down to add the pieces you missed in order to build the whole thing properly.

What do you find most rewarding about being creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is the ability to share my art with the world and having the opportunity to positively influence people, even if it’s just one person. There’s a lot of amazing art out there, and things worthy of going viral can get lost in our news feeds and end up being seen by just a few people. But as long as those few people can see and interpret the art—its beauty, its emotions, its controversy—it’s worth it to create. Just one design can have an influence on someone by teaching them something, making them think in a different way, or inspiring them to try something new. I know it’s happened to me before with designs I’ve seen online, and having that outlet myself brings me joy.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wrote this list of resources for a Texas State student entering her senior year. It’s a great resource for aspiring designers/art directors who are looking at building their portfolios, or looking to excel in their first internship/job.

Design Programs/Software:
—First off, see if you can get Adobe programs through your school or work email. There’s also a free trial of each program.
—Figma
• Free, online tool to create and collaborate. Also comes in an app you can download. I started using Figma at my second agency back in September and I love it. Really good for templates, web design, social media design, etc. Doesn’t have all the tools that Illustrator & Photoshop have, but it’s a solid program to start with if you can’t access Adobe. Recommend learning this and putting it on your resume over something like Canva.
—Google Slides/PowerPoint
• Not design software, but good (and free) programs to add into your toolbox if you’re trying to become a designer. I’ve done SO MANY presentation projects, and they’re done 70% in Google Slides and 30% in PowerPoint, so start with Google Slides, as it’s more collaborative for companies to use. I’ve always have “presentation design” listed under my skills in my resume because it’s such a common project for clients—I’ve been asked SO many times “can you make this slide look better?” I’ll attach a before & after for a request I got yesterday where the guy literally asked that verbatim.
• These programs can be a little frustrating because they don’t have the best user interface, but the more you use them, the more you get used to it and get better at navigating around. Download the “Stop Slide Scrolling in Google Presentation” for Google Slides if you use Chrome
• Learn Master Slides/Templates; this will save you so much time down the road and most clients don’t know how to use them. It’s the base skill you need to learn in presentation design. You can make them from scratch, or consider downloading templates that other designers have made to get an idea of commonly used layouts as well as inspiration.

Resources: These are all the ones I have on hand that I’ve used in the past or still today. You can always search for more or ask around. I highly recommend making a folder in your browser that contains all the websites you most commonly use so you can easily find them again later.
—Inspiration:
• Behance: My favorite, I use it all the time. You can make mood boards if you create an account, and there’s some downloadable resources as well.
• Designspiration: Can search by color theme, has good photos too.
• Pinterest: Can make different boards for different types of design; take a look at mine
—Mock-ups (must have Photoshop):
• Graphic Burger
• Pixeden
• Mockup World, especially their animated mockup to take it to the next level.
• LS Graphics
• Unblast
• IMPORTANT: everything in your portfolio should be in a mock-up! It looks so much more professional and legit. If you’re starting your portfolio from scratch, look at available mock-ups that you could make a design for that could be a project in your portfolio. When you find a good mock-up, save it in a folder so you can use it again if needed.

—Icons:
• Smashicons: Icon website that has tons of icons for $2/month. Take a look at their Design Resources page too.
• The Noun Project: Free icons for download in PNG and SVG formats

—Free high-res photos:
• Unsplash (the best)
• Burst
• Pixabay
• StockSnap
• Pexels

—Free vectors/illustrations:
• Vecteezy
• Lukas Adam Illustrations
• Humaaans
• DrawKit
• Open Doodles
• Illustrations.co

—Miscellaneous:
• Adobe Color Wheel: Can create & save your own color palettes when logged into your Adobe account, also has tons of inspo/trends.
• True Grit Texture Supply: Has pack of free resources if you subscribe to their newsletter. Also has blog & gallery for inspo.
• DaFont: Free downloadable fonts; used this ALL THE TIME when I was just starting out.
• Shrink.me: File compressor for large images that will shrink your overall file size down and prevent lagging files. ALWAYS use when dealing with stock photos.

—Portfolio Inspo: These are the top portfolio schools in the country, so don’t let yourself get intimidated, but they’re good to look at in terms of 1) how they laid out their portfolio and 2) current design trends.
• Creative Circus
• VCU Brandcenter
• Miami Ad School

—Game plan:
1. Save the resources you like to a folder in your toolbar; I recommend “tools” and “inspiration” folders to start.
2. Access Adobe Creative Cloud and concentrate on learning the basics of Illustrator & Photoshop. I mainly watched YouTube videos for anything I didn’t know how to do. After that, learn the basics of Figma and Google Slides/PowerPoint.
3. Start thinking of projects to fill the rest of your portfolio with. Save projects that catch your eye on Pinterest or Behance and analyze what about them you want to embody in your own project. The color scheme? The typography style? The concept? A specific execution? Pay attention to what you like and what you want to make yourself. Design is a job where you can truly love what you’re making, so find out what you love first.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alyssanodorft.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/alyssanodo
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/alyssanodorft
• Other: www.driphardcoffee.com www.instagram.com/driphardcoffee www.twitter.com/driphardcoffee