Conversations with Carolina Uscategui

Carolina Uscategui

Born in Bogota, Colombia—immigrated to Toronto, Canada, and now residing in California, USA; my life has been a journey. Being part of the Americas has provided me with a perspective and ambition in life that I am grateful for. Bogota taught me community, Toronto taught me spirit, and Los Angeles taught me perseverance. All three attributes make me who I am today: a proud Latina!

I’ve worked in the corporate world being a Design Consultant at Deloitte, Toronto, working with large companies across industries from automotive to healthcare. I’ve always wanted to get a master’s degree and decided to move to Los Angeles, California to achieve this goal. Upon completing my MFA in Graphic Design, I secured a contract as a Visual Designer at NASA JPL in Southern California, which is a dream come true.

I look back at my six-year-old self who lived in Bogota, Colombia—who fled the violence with her family, to now, residing in Pasadena and exploring the possibilities of typography and the cosmos. Life is a journey and I look forward to what will come when I am 30, 40, 50, 60.

Life—being easy? Never! There have been struggles throughout my life; being an immigrant, you need to adapt to your new environment. You yearn for a home—but you do not have one.

Although I’ve considered myself to have achieved great success in my 28 years on this Earth, one of the most prominent struggles I have is imposter syndrome. I find it fascinating that almost everyone I talk to has this, yet they are the most incredible human beings. This comes with managing the idea of worth within myself, the worth that aligns with the work I make, and having to constantly remind myself that it wasn’t just luck that provided me with these opportunities, but it was myself, my thinking, and my work ethic.

During the final year of my Graduate degree, I ended up with a stomach infection called H.Pylori, leading to an intestinal infection called C.Dif, then led to an array of digestive issues. Then, in my final four months of school, I got a blood clot in my leg that led to losing my mobility during the most important project of my life—my Graduate Thesis. Even then I took a breath and persevered, I did not isolate myself but rather in moments of my most vulnerable I leaned in, on my community to support me—my friends, my professors, my family, my boyfriend, my garden, my worms. This struggle taught me that with community, patience, and kindness, we could overcome even the hardest of times; a bit of humour helps, too.

On a professional basis, I am a Visual Researcher/ Designer—meaning I focus on taking incredibly complex ideas and synthesizing them into digestible pieces for the broader audience. I especially focus on the intersection between design and science. I find the two to have similar systems of production in the sense that you need a hypothesis in return for a concept, then you need to prove your hypothesis, which in design is the making process, and in return, you have the findings, which is what your design practice solves or communicates. These STEM fields could provide a beautiful symbiotic relationship with design, where when both practices converge, you can communicate these abstract ideas to a larger public and create pockets of intrigue and culture!

I focus on publications, grids, typography, fonts, and branding systems—as they have technical needs. Such as, publications require a rhythm based on the tone, and typography requires kerning and mathematics to formulate the most effortless baselines to make it easy to read. With this technical focus, I also enjoy exploring the limits of what graphic design is and provoking new methods of communication—not solemnly through text and paper, but asking questions such as: what will typography look like in 100 years? What will be the development of language and design in, let’s say, Mars? How could we create communication between species? Exploring these drastically wild questions allows me, as a designer, to create worlds of possibilities.

I’m incredibly proud of my Master’s Thesis (DE)COMPOSITION: The Death of Graphic Design and the Rebirth of a New Practice. Considering all the health complications that I pushed through. I was also able to collaborate with bacteria and Myxograstria to create a piece of graphic design that dies, decomposes, and feeds its surrounding ecosystem, reframing what it means to ‘practice design’ and embed into a cycle of reciprocity with its surrounding environment. The project is still ongoing, and it is quite a conversation piece with other creatives—as I love to talk about my compost bin that has poster-eating worms!

Going back to the first question, being able to live in three countries before turning 30, facing conflicts in my homeland, being an immigrant in Toronto, and leaning into friendships and community in Los Angeles—allows me to look at the world through a different lens. To see it critically and explore the possibilities that life and making is not a linear process but rather it’s something that is ever evolving and growing. I am a thinker, a conduit, a maker, and a magician!

Be patient with yourself. You’re not going to perfect the craft in 48 hours; it takes years of learning.

Be genuine to others.

Ask all the questions; asking a question is not a reflection of stupidity, but rather, a reflection of intelligence.