Meet Hannah Whitt

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hannah Whitt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hannah below.

Hannah, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I 101% get my resilience from my mom, Mrs.Rachel Joy. My mom’s side of the family immigrated to Carson in the early 90s from the Philippines, as she was only 18 and the second eldest. She was working two jobs while studying to get her computer science degree because she was stubborn and like me, didn’t want to take the traditional medical route. Everything she did was not only for herself but for her family, and that’s one of many traits I picked up from her. She had always been an unstoppable force, and that’s something she raised me on.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Hello! My name is Hannah Whitt. I’m currently a senior majoring in Graphic Design at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. I was born and raised in a loving Filipino household in Carson, California. Through all the extracurricular activities and sports I grew up doing, art was truly the one thing that I took seriously. Being the first art kid in my family who had the intention of pursuing it as a career, I never really knew what I wanted to do in the future.

When it was time to apply to art colleges in my senior year, I remember starting my portfolio from scratch because I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I turned in something I wasn’t proud of. This was when I truly began to discover who I was as an artist, then ultimately a designer. I was hungry and made the conscious decision to constantly push myself to not only better my technical skills but also to test my resilience and work ethic. I think I was working on 4-5 different projects at a time to ensure I put my best foot forward for the next stage of my life, which at the time was college.

4 years later, I’m still the try-hard I always was, with love for the craft at the core of my design process.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Be a try-hard, love what you do, and be kind. Something that really helped me in my journey was always aiming higher and pushing myself to go outside the box. With every project (professional or personal), I constantly challenge myself, and I usually never take the easy route when it comes to design. Especially in school, just be a yes man, even if it’s painfully awkward. The last thing is to be kind. You’ll meet a lot of different people in the creative industry as you go on, and I always make an effort to get to know them beyond what they do for work.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I think I would spend that decade doing what I’m doing now, and then some. I’d work on as many design projects as I can before my time is up. I think I would splurge a lot more on food every day since I’m constantly craving something. Spend lots of quality time with my family, Joel, and my cat Tuna. Towards the end, you’d probably find me somewhere in Oahu eating spicy mayo poke from a nearby Foodland.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://toastywaffles.com/
• Instagram: h1.jpeg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hwhitt/