TAYLOR WHITESEL | ABOUT ME

Originally from Springfield, Virginia, Taylor moved to Florida to study Graphic Design at The University of Tampa.

Being a recent graduate from the University of Tampa, Taylor studied Film, Animation, and New Media. Throughout his college career, Taylor has developed a passion for Graphic Design, Front End UX/UI Web Design/Development, Video Post-Production, and Advertising. In addition to being a member of the UT Swim Team for two and a half years, Taylor was the head of IT with The Microfinance Club where he created and maintained the group’s website and graphics. Also, Taylor was the Web Developer/Designer this semester for UT’s Student Ad Agency where a group of passionate individuals studying marketing and creative efforts designed a full fledged plan for a real client. Taylor also interned at HCP Associates. A marketing firm in which Taylor does Web Development and Video Production.

Taylor is currently employed as a graphic designer at Spathe Systems, a Defense Contracting Company based out of Tampa. There, he is tasked with a handful of things including Creating professional graphics/flowcharts for top of the line DoD proposals, Web Development, Photography, Flyers, and newsletters.

Statement

My love for all things New Media didn’t start with my freshman year. Ever since I first laid my hands on a keyboard, I have been passionate about what I do in this field. Things like video editing, web design, and graphic design have been practiced in my spare time for a little over a decade and it was never something that I could cut down to focus in on one topic. That’s why New Media was such a good fit for me. It encompasses everything that I love doing and I never thought that I would ever enjoy courses as much as I did this past 4 years. Going into Freshman year, I had an idea that I wanted to focus in on Graphic Design. It was what I was doing the most in highschool and I honestly enjoyed doing it. However, once getting past the first few semesters, my interests started to steer towards programming, more specifically Web Design and Development. Since I’m not really an artist in the traditional sense, Web Design allowed me to express my creativity in a way that I really couldn’t do with Graphic Design. And because of that, I spent the majority of my college career focusing on Web Dev/Des. I did many independent and class projects revolving around it and currently have an internship focusing around it. It wasn’t until my senior year with my Advanced Post Production class where I started to regain a serious passion for film. As mentioned before, I have always been keen to the video editing process. It was really the first passion I developed with my first experience with computers, and has always really just been in the back of my mind up until now. This last semester, I decided to channel in this inner post production passion to make a feature length documentary. While I have never produced a film before, I thought I might as well start somewhere, and this experience was such a good example of that. I have learned so much about how a film is made and was able to also apply my strengths to it to make up for my weaknesses. Upon graduation, I plan on continuing to work in Web Design/Web Dev. with also doing Freelance work for post production and film to get more experience in the field. I would love to someday work as a senior editor to movies and focus in on color grading/correction.