Designers have a lot of ideas and just as many opinions. It’s why we limit Six Questions, our regular BTS look at the people, faces and ideas of Latitude, to well, just six questions. This month we met up with Maddie Markley, designer, photographer and a team member we can no longer call “new” …

SQ: Maddie, we were tempted to call you a new addition to the Latitude team, but that’s not really true anymore, right?

Sometimes I still feel new, but I can’t believe I just recently passed my year and a half mark. I think it’s because I’ve been so busy digging into projects, and our clients keep asking for more, that the time has flown by. I’ve had some incredible opportunities to work on really game-changing brands, and I’m learning a lot from the rest of our team.

SQ: What were you doing before Latitude?

Interning, learning, and developing my skills. I had back-to-back internships at Fidelity Investments in Manhattan as a video and design intern, a brand design internship at a small soda company called PepsiCo, and then both an internship and freelance design work for Strong Studio in Brooklyn and GoPrattGo – an initiative of Pratt, where I went to school in New York. Internships are a lot of work, and can get bad reputations in the design and advertising worlds, but they’re really a fast, intense way to get steeped in all kinds of different branding and design worlds and really develop perspective.

SQ: What do you do at the agency now?

I’m a designer with a wide range of responsibilities across our client base that can mean everything from branding components to packaging to experiential design elements for our work in sports apparel for clients like Adidas. I also have a background in photography. I’m passionate about it, so you can often find me shooting headshots, images for social media channels and campaigns.

SQ: What’s something people don’t know about you?

I used to be part of a Roller Derby team. And let me tell you, the people who say you need a thick skin in marketing and advertising, haven’t been on a rink. It’s fast, intense, fun, and easy to get an injury or two. That last part is one of the reasons I switched back to volleyball. I’ve played volleyball for over fourteen years, and I played in college.

SQ: Where do you think design is headed next?

Everywhere. Design has really shaped and changed so much. Yes it’s about beautiful packaging to sell products, and helping brands stand out, but it’s also so much more. Strategic Design – the discipline we practice at Latitude – is about problem-solving and ideas that really change the way things are done. That could mean inspirational, experiential design that really engages people and changes the way they think, or redesigning the way we use everyday tools and items, to redesigning cities. Most people think design is on a page or a screen, but it’s everywhere.

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