Oxana Melis Barsukova
a graphic designer in Pasadena, California.
Oxana’s passion for visual art followed her through all life. Although she graduated with a mathematics bachelor’s degree from Kuban State University in Russia, Oxana later found herself working as a teacher of graphics programs at the adult public courses. She also worked as “Jack of all trades” at the travel agency, doing sales, data analysis, and advertising, which lead her to become a graphic designer at a local advertising agency where she learned the print process, page layout, image treatments and the basics of typography.
Since Oxana moved to the USA in 2008, she started to learn English, making it her real second language and realizing an extrovert personality in the new country.
Graphic design freelancing helped her to make a living until she decided to become a well-educated specialist and enrolled in ArtCenter College of Design. Oxana mastered her typography skills, composition, and concept developing; she fell in love with interaction design, portrait, and product photography.
Ms. Barsukova didn’t stop freelancing for Los Angeles small business owners on her school brakes and semesters off because she didn’t want to lose the sense of working with real clients, that she believes, is an essential part of the design process. The combination of her working experience and the years of creative freedom within academic education in ArtCenter made Oxana a useful specialist in the real world of graphic design.