Jackie Berra, having made Lawrence, KS her home for the last 12 years, is originally from St. Louis, MO and attended high school at Nerinx Hall, clearly the “high school” question is the first thing all of you St. Louisians want to ask. She grew up in Saint Louis Hill’s neighborhood surrounded by brownstones, cute little shops and amongst neighbors whose doors were always open. Jackie loves to run and bike the Grant’s Trail with her dad, travel the world with her sister, spoil her niece and nephew and consult her mom for fashion advice. Her family still calls St. Louis home so Jackie often makes trips back to visit the old hood.
Art has been Jackie’s passion since she was a little girl, often taking her mom’s dry cleaning wire hangers and molding them into sculptures or using the back of an entire roll of wrapping paper to draw out a life-size scene from her favorite childhood movie, both of which can still be found in the basement of her parent’s home. She also took several art classes, thanks to her mom, at the St. Louis Art Museum. As Jackie got a little older she found a new passion in computers and by combining art and computers she naturally molded into the field of Graphic Design.
Jackie attended The University of Kansas and after 4 years of hard work and, of course a little play, she graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts, with a focus in Graphic Design. Prior to graduation, Jackie worked as a Sign Maker for an Anheuser-Busch distribution center and in January of 2003 she began work as a Graphic Designer at Protection 1, the second largest electronic security company in the nation, where she quickly worked her way up to Senior Graphic Designer. While at Protection 1 she earned the Bronze Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communications in 2003, was named the Employee of the Quarter in 2008, and was a finalist in logo design at the 2009 Sammy Awards. After spending eight years at Protections 1, The University of Kansas came calling and Jackie, being a Jayhawk through and through, was excited about the opportunity to return to her alma mater. Now she spends her days, at the “coolest job” in the world, designing, directing and executing the majority of the creative projects for Kansas Athletics, which includes promoting all 18 sports with posters, media guides, game program covers, ticket brochures, schedule cards, flyers and any other promotional item you can think of.
Since you are visiting this site and reading this lovely bio, you also know that Jackie is a freelance designer, where she works on corporate identity, corporate branding, print collateral, promotional materials, videos, personal invitations and announcement, as well as, web design and development. Jackie is proficient in the latest versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks and Dreamweaver, (take a breath here cause the list goes on). She is also experienced with HTML, CSS, GoLive, Flash, Microsoft Office Suite, iMovie and Keynote, has strong troubleshooting skills, is familiar with cross-browser and cross-platform issues, is comfortable with Mac or PC, (see, aren’t you glad you took a breath), all in all she is pretty good at just about everything.
Jackie is also active in the local community and has worked with a number of non-profit organizations including teaching art classes at VanGo and working with the Willow Domestic Violence Center to promote their Walk A Mile in Her Shoes event.
Jackie Berra is an excellent designer, a hard worker, and an overall good person. She will do whatever it takes to give you the product you desire, even if you aren’t sure exactly what that is.
*Biography written by Maria Cuevas, client and owner of MariaMakesCakes.com
