ABOVE RIGHT: 2007 | STORYBOARDS FOR PORTRAIT FILM SERIES CLIENT: MUSEUM OF CHINESE IN AMERICA

Katie Lee describes her work as “minimalist,” with ideas driv­ing visual outcomes. The result is design that is beautiful with solid thinking evident in every detail, whatever the medium. A Yale MFA who splits her time between print, interactive and motion design, Lee explains her cross-platform involvements as “an attempt to keep changing in ways that surprise me. I want to push beyond my own conventions to create more compelling com­munication vehicles—whether that means using new film tech­niques, expanding into a 3D site or hanging a piece of paper on a string.” For Lee, it all comes down to choices, tightly defined and composed to reinforce a central idea. “I want to convey something with the least amount of distractions.”

Starting in New York as a print designer for Shapiro Design Associates, Lee designed websites for Razorfish in the New York and San Francisco offices, then moved to L.A., where she worked with Ogilvy & Mather, ReVerb Studio and Prologue Films. At Pro­logue, working with Kyle Cooper, she designed and art-directed motion graphics and titles for television and .lm. Most recently, Lee has joined Local Projects as senior graphic designer, applying her range of talents to film and interactive projects for museums and cultural institutions.

“I met Katie over fajitas and margaritas one crazy night in Pas­adena,” says design writer and editor Alissa Walker. “Although originally impressed by her clever contributions to the conversa­tion, I soon realized that a hefty hunk of the high-profile design work I’d praised over the last few years had seen the hands of this talented young woman. She always seems to know where the action is.” Born and raised in Reno, Nev., Lee says she loves L.A., but had trouble finding opportunities in the areas she wanted to pursue. “I wanted to do work for museums and cultural cli­ents. Local Projects was interested in my ability to work in several media. I like Local Projects because of the sense that we are defining who we are and where we are going. It feels very raw and open, like there are lots of possibilities.”

Maintaining a stylistic “hook” or visual through-line in her work is of little interest to Lee. “I like that my work looks different on different projects,” she asserts. “I’ve moved a lot across dif­ferent industries within graphic design with the hope that my obsessions and compulsions can help make sense of something or help make something worth sharing. I learn a lot and in many ways get to share my own subjective experience of those facts through my formal representation of them.”

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