This November, we welcomed new graphic designer Lauren Addy. Lauren is a talented animator with a strong knack for storytelling. She started on her creative journey at a very young age. She would often accompany her X-ray technician mother to the hospital she worked at. While there, she became fascinated by the human body and how it affects movement.

This early medical love led Lauren to consider a spectrum of careers including genetics and bio-medical illustration. She said, ” At first I thought I wanted to illustrate medical textbooks, but it soon became apparent to me that exaggerating the body was way more fun than getting it medically accurate.”

After a stint in the University of Minnesota’s genetics and biology program, she changed majors to mixed media art and graduated with her degree in 2008. While the U of M gave her a great eye for design and a strong foundation in fine art, she still felt room for growth in the niche field of animation. To meet that need, she immediately began working towards a degree in animation from the Art Institute.

Once the foundation was laid, Lauren came into a variety of roles in her career, but, she came to notice one uniting factor across positions – the completely undeniable presence of a story. Lauren explains, “Everything is a story, even real life has foreshadowing, theme songs, sages, antagonists and heroes. I ended up doing more video work and design because all of it was about story. Everyone has a message to tell and there are so many ways to tell it.”

This passion for storytelling is evident in Lauren’s in-house work, but also out-of-office. In her free time she enjoys reading about different cultures and countries, and occasionally diving into a light read by Neil Degrasse Tyson. She also illustrates and writes her very own serialized graphic novel called Unit 418. When she isn’t following or creating, she’s busy being the heroine of her own story by traveling the globe and hosting rounds of Dungeons and Dragons.

Moving forward, Lauren is hoping to grow on her foundation in graphic design and grow in her layout skills while at Fuzzy Duck. We can’t wait to see what you do at Fuzzy Duck. Welcome to the team Lauren!

To learn more about the rest of the Fuzzy Duck family, visit our team page.