When I was a kid living in Belgium for a few years, a beautifully designed can of peas on a supermarket shelf made me want to be a designer even though I didn’t know there was such a profession back then. I wanted to be the person who made things like cans of peas in a supermarket look so enticing.

Design is about much more than looks, but we all know that looking good is at least half the battle. I have the training and skills to help you analyze your project and shape it to get the results you want. My illustration work can be a part of that if it fits, or can be commissioned separately.

I love using my design and image-making skills for causes I believe in, small business and individuals. Contact me if you have a project in mind.

I also run a bnb in the summer and do what I can to help the street cats of Vis year-round.

Early influences: Navy brat, lots of traveling: lived on both U.S. coasts, also in Greece and Belgium

Languages: English, French, Spanish

Superpower: simplifying

Education: Parsons School of Design, NYC
BFA in communication design 1986, lived and worked in NYC until 1999
then Charlotte, NC until 2007
then Charleroi, Belgium until 2020
now Vis, Croatia

Early biz: Trotter & Uretsky Design (1984-89)

Apprenticeships: Cipe Pineles (83), Reba Sochis (84), Lance Wyman (86-88), 
Keith Godard (91-93), J.C. Suares (93-96)

Founded The Ministry of Fun as my freelance biz in 1993, morphed into Little Shiva in 2000

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Testimonials

When my partner Beth Stephens and I started a new multi-media art project with an environmental activist theme, we chose Little Shiva to make a poster for us as we liked her work a lot. The poster was so well done we then asked her to design a postcard. That grew into a banner for a parade, a couple of logos, a really cool business card and more. Each design she made inspired yet another project, each in harmony with the other. Shiva was a joy to work with: she took all our suggestions and desires into consideration and was super professional. She’s our design angel.
— Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., Sexecology.Org

Designers of Little Shiva’s skill level intuitively know how information wants to be presented. When powerful design and creative written content combine, the resulting site can quickly exceed the limits of standard ecommerce. I’m always looking forward to Little Shiva’s next project.
— Christopher Karwowski, cgk.ink

The typical designer assumes a female advice columnist needs some cutesy pink masthead for her website. Even if you insist that you don’t want cutesy or pink, you typically get something that’s at least pink in spirit. Ugh. Well, Little Shiva didn’t start with any of the usual assumptions. She really listened to me and then translated my ideas about my personality and my brand’s personality into a strong visual, creating a masthead that really captures the spirit of both, conceptually and visually. She also solved design problems I didn’t understand that I had until she solved them. For example, without my asking, she put my photo into my masthead — exactly the right thinking when designing a masthead for a “personality.” A lot of designers are about strong images — and she’s very much about that, too — but a really strong design is also an intelligent, problem-solving design, and that’s exactly what she gave me.
— Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess