Biography

Courtney is a Pacific Northwest born and raised graphic designer. She works for herself as a freelance designer and artist, combining fine art with graphic design to create eye-catching pieces. She considers herself the Swiss Army Knife of design and has worked on projects of all kinds: commissioned paintings, sculpted characters for an animated music video (as well as animated a scene), designed and applied decals to vehicles, scanned, digitally printed and bound books, restored old WWII photographs, designed billboards, mounted large format signage, built brands and their stories, painted murals, designed websites and implemented them to a chosen platform, created environmentally friendly packaging and photographed it, and much more. If you can think it, Courtney can find the means to make it happen.

Courtney’s life started in the big city of Portland, but something always drew her to the high desert country of Sherman County, Oregon, where her mother’s family resided as wheat and cattle farmers. After moving back “home” to the country, Courtney quickly realized that was where her heart was. Her parents built the Kivett Family “Funny Farm”, equip with a horse named Ace, chickens galore, rabbits, goats, sheep, barn cats, maybe even a couple house cats, GIANT goldfish you’d think were coy, guinea pigs (all named Pokey), and not nearly enough dogs. Courtney knew she would follow in her parent’s footsteps of creative brilliance, her mother being a talented hobby painter and master gardener, and her father being a genius craftsman that can make anything out of wood. She knew from high school that her career would be in graphic design; a career that could mold her artistic talents into something more practical in today’s age of technology. This led her to the graphic and web design program at The Art Institute of Portland, where she flourished more than she ever could have imagined. It was a dream come true. She landed her first job three months after graduation, at a small design agency, House of Gul. When life made changes for her, she decided to move back to Sherman County and be an in-house designer at a quickly growing CBD manufacturer, ironically in the same building where she attended kindergarten to 6th grade, still housing the school’s student-made mural where she painted a small lynx. When an illness took over the world and she was forced to move on. Courtney found herself at her current job, Optimist Printers, where she works as the lead designer, pre-press and digital printer.

When she isn’t at her desk finding new design solutions, you will find Courtney photographing Oregon, camping, and finding new inspiration in nature with her partner and her beloved companion, Chico. She believes that less is more, and environmentally friendly design is important for the preservation of our planet. She would love to hear your story and bring it to life with artistic graphic design.