So this is the part where I tell you all of the reasons why should hire me to create your website/brochure/book/invitation/business cards/fill in the blank. I’ll get to those reasons but I’ll start by telling you a little bit about me. My name is Kyra Dosch-Klemer. I’m a lover of all things creative (okay, almost all – not a big lover of pottery). I love to make things, I love to think outside of the box, and I love visually telling a story. I’m from New Jersey by way of New York, Ohio, and Montana, currently live in Pennsylvania, but a bit of my heart still resides in Asheville, North Carolina, the city in the mountains that my now husband and I left in 2010.
As for design, I started dabbling in it in 1998 when I was working as a Director of Sales & Marketing for a computer company. Apparently, that’s what you do after you graduate college with a degree in art history. Get a job that is completely unrelated to art history. The job was less than inspirational, but I had a wonderful boss who set me up with Adobe programs (I’m not sure which versions we were using in the late 90’s) and let me go to town creating brochures and pamphlets and eventually a website for the company. Don’t worry, I won’t show you that one.
From there, I immersed myself in design and eventually took several art and design classes, taught myself web design and the rest is history. Well, not really, but that’s where it all started. And after that I worked as a “webmaster” (remember that term?) for a non-profit for a few years. In addition to taking care of the web design, I was tasked with doing most of the print work for the organization. Wow! I learned almost everything I needed to know about print (including the fact that I loved it) in addition to the web! That’s about the time when CSS was really coming into view so I learned the ins and outs of CSS and HTML and hand coding. I learned through necessity and inspiration and it paid off.
In 2006 my then boyfriend (now husband) and I hit the road and moved to Asheville, North Carolina, a progressive little city in the mountains. It was there that I really started thriving in design. I got a job for a web development company that focused on clients in the music and arts industry as well as on one of its products, an e-newsletter tool. I moved up to project manager and was in charge of all client projects. We made some fabulous websites and I worked with an amazing team. When it was time to move on I worked at another web agency in Asheville. It was there that I really learned the ins and outs of the development side of projects. I was one of the main developers and although I didn’t have the opportunity to design as much as I would have liked, my coding skills improved tons while I was there. My last stop in Asheville, before having a baby and moving back up north, was working as an art director at another Asheville agency. All three jobs were very client-focused which taught me so much about working with people and learning their stories, their needs, as well as getting these two things out of them.
And now? I work out of my home; still making websites, still working with clients, still creating print work, and still loving design. I just get to do it at the kitchen table, at my desk, on the couch, or on the porch.
I do other things than design. I love hanging out with my husband, David, and our amazingly cool daughter, Indira. I enjoy practicing yoga, hiking, cooking, traveling (yay road trips!), taking tons of photos, looking at art, reading and exploring.
You can read my other blog, Crouching Woman, here, and you can see my photos here and here.