Staci Dumoski“Chapman has been a part of my life since I was a kid,” said Jillian Warren ’24, a graphic design major and psychology minor who has worked for the university’s office of Strategic Marketing and Communications (SMC) for the last two years. Her parents are both alumni, and her father works in the office of Information Services and Technology.
“Obviously my parents really wanted me to go here,” she said.
Fortunately, she loved the campus and appreciated the warm, small environment, so the decision to attend Chapman made everyone happy.
Warren’s professional association with SMC began while she was still in high school, when she needed to fulfill an internship requirement before graduating.
“Because she was still a high school student, I had to work hard to get her on campus so that she could shadow what I did as a designer,” said Rosalinda Monroy, Chapman’s creative director at the time. “I could tell she was talented and had a special gift.”
Warren said she wasn’t too familiar with the programs, but shadowing Monroy and seeing the kinds of projects done by SMC gave her a good taste.
“Learning how to do it was honestly better than anything I could have imagined.”
Warren returned to SMC as a student worker on the design team at the end of her second year at Chapman. She has created a variety of marketing pieces for the university including brochures, one-sheets, ads, animations, banners, iconography and magazine layouts.
“I’ve gotten to work on some pretty big projects that I didn’t expect to be doing when I started my job,” she said.
One of the most memorable was the creation of Chapman’s new brand campaign that launched in 2023.
“I was able to come up with my own concepts for the new visual look and pitch them to the creative team. It was really nerve wracking, but also a great professional experience for me. Getting to see the development of everyone’s ideas and seeing how all that came together was super interesting and impactful for me,” she said, appreciative of how the professional experience enhanced the education she received in her classes. “Now that I’m graduating, I feel so much more prepared to enter the professional field of design.”
“She is an exceptional employee,” said Julie Kennedy, SMC’s current art director. “Professional, dependable, creative and always looking for ways to grow and help the team.”
While her job in SMC gave her a strong professional foundation, Warren’s coursework helped grow her creative skills in diverse areas that included motion design, typography, editorial work, user experience and user interface.
“You get to dabble in a lot of different fields to decide what you want to pursue in design, because there are so many routes that you can potentially take.”
One of her favorite class projects was a campaign designed to call attention to gender inequity in the professional art world.
“I worked as a research assistant for one of the art professors and did research on local art galleries in Los Angeles … I found that there’s a pretty significant disparity in the number of women who are featured in art galleries,” she said.
For her project, she developed a series of posters, infographics and conceptual merchandise to spotlight the issue.
In her senior year, Warren participated in the National Student Advertising Competition, an annual contest held by the American Advertising Federation that has teams of students operate as ad agencies to develop a multi-channel advertising campaign for a corporate sponsor. As a member of the art and production team, Warren helped develop the look and feel of the campaign, including producing mockups of all the creative executions, for this year’s sponsor/client, Tide.
The Chapman team won first place in this year’s district competition against schools from throughout southern California and Nevada.
After graduation, Warren plans to work at a design studio or agency somewhere in Los Angeles or Orange County.
“I want to get as much experience as I can with a broad range of clients,” she said, expressing a particular interest in branding or editorial work. “But hopefully just finding somewhere that allows me to pursue my passion even more.”
