Jose Roque is a freelance graphic designer raised in Connecticut. Growing up in a family of artists, Jose always knew he wanted to pursue the arts professionally, which is why he went to an art high school. Around this time Jose learned to rely and focus on himself, pouring that time into his work.

He received his Bachelor’s Degree for Communication, Media, and Screen Studies at Southern Connecticut State University. This year, Jose has begun his journey at Quinnipiac in the DCCS program.

While at Southern, Jose took a minor in graphic design and used that experience to get his first freelance job: designing a T-shirt and recording an advertisement for a basketball game.

That was not his first time recording as he was a news assistant for the SCSU TV club. After researching what events were happening on campus, Jose would grab his camcorder and record them. He edited the events into news segments using Adobe Premiere Pro. Over three years Jose moved up to the news director position of SCSU TV, which meant he was now in charge of the scripts and order of segments. In his final year at the TV club, Jose passed the torch to a new director to focus back on graphic design.

Throughout his time at Southern, Jose became more familiar with other Adobe products like Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and Photoshop. Jose is currently pursuing work in the graphic design industry. His interest in interactive design is what led him to interactive media and communications at Quinnipiac.

He was always interested in the UI of everything around him. From the text in a video game, to the select menu on his TV, to the grocery store self-checkout, Jose was charmed by how art met technology. As an artist at heart, creating a visual system that would be used by many people is something that gets him excited to keep creating. He hopes to make compelling works that the average consumer will find easy to understand and operate.

At Southern, Jose took a user interface/user experience class in which he created the visuals and basic functionality for an app that was meant to boost the user’s mental health. What made Jose so satisfied with the result was that the professors of this course used a picture of his work as the feature photo for their upcoming UI and UX Master’s program! This is one of many reasons why Jose is confident to continue going down this road. He hopes that by going through the DCCS program, Jose will spice up his resume and be able to join a design team.