New Faces, New Perspectives: Meet Our Newest BentoBox Designers
With BentoBox growing, so must the design team! We’ve never had this many designers join the team at the same time, and we’re excited to introduce each and every one of them.
Bella
- Celebrity Skin — Hole
- Back to Black — Amy Winehouse
- Águas de Março — Tom Jobim
- Ain’t it Fun — Paramore
- Monkey Wrench — Foo Fighters
What’s your motto in life
“Get busy living or get busy dying.” — Andy Dufresne, “Shawshank Redemption”
What made you choose web design as a career
My mom was an art teacher and my dad was an art director and very into computers since the early days, so I was just naturally inclined to anything involving art and technology. You put those two together and you get web design!
What’s your favorite recipe/homecooked meal
My mom’s feijoada with white beans
Tell us a funny story about one of your pets
One day while I was working, we had our landscaper doing some work connecting a sprinkler system for our backyard, and needed access to our laundry room which is on the back of the house. After he finished, a few hours elapsed, and I got a call from an unknown number, which luckily I decided to answer from our creepy nosy neighbor across the street. I answered and she informed me that my dog was laying down by our front door. I quickly rushed downstairs to open the door and found my dog sitting like a perfect gentleman awaiting to come inside. After checking the ring cameras we realized the landscaper left the back door cracked and my dog Chandler let himself out to explore, after a deep exploration from our backyard to the front yard, he was tired of his newfound freedom and came back to the front door and stared at the door for a good while, then laid down until someone noticed.
Leanna
- Not the Same — Ben Folds
- The Stable Song — Gregory Alan Isakof
- September Song — Agnes Obel
- Space Oddity — David Bowie
- The Story — Brandi Carlile
Motto
“It’s never too late for now.” — 30 Rock
Web Design Career
I’ve always loved being creative in any capacity. I was drawn to web design because I love the challenge of using code to create something beautiful.
Favorite Recipe
Right now we are really into making smash burgers at home. Here’s our favorite recipe.
Funny Story about your Pets
We have a cat, Penny, who was a stray and welcomed herself into our home. We thought she was pregnant, so we took her to the vet. They confirmed she probably was pregnant. My husband, being the extreme animal lover he is, went around the house making little nest areas for her to give birth, and we let her eat all she wanted.
Cut to … a couple months later, no kittens. We took her to another vet and it turned out she was not pregnant, just fat from all the extra food we gave her. We had promised the kittens to our friends and everything! Luckily, she is the sweetest kitty ever and is a great addition to the family.
Chelsea
- Cooks — Still Woozy
- Floors — Abhi The Nomad
- Where’d all the time go — Bird & Byron
- Sink into the floor — Feng Suave
- Balance — Future Islands
Life Motto:
“Why not?”
What made you choose web design as a career?
I switched majors in college to pursue graphic design because I loved the variety of work. I enjoyed every time I was able to learn about coding my designs, but I continued to pursue general graphic design internships and jobs. Working at an agency, I found I was most excited by my work when it involved web design and decided to pursue a career concentrating on only that!
What’s your favorite recipe/homecooked meal?
Chicken cordon bleu! I love cooking, but my favorite meal is one I’ve never attempted cooking. I’ve had chicken cordon bleu every year for my birthday (excluding some vegetarian years).
Tell us a funny story about one of your pets?
*No animals were harmed in the making of this story*
One of my old apartments on the second floor had the windows bolted so they could only open a few inches. While I was out getting lunch, I got a call from the leasing office saying my dog and roommate’s dog were in the office because they’d jumped from the second story window…. Turns out they had seen a dog getting walked on the sidewalk below and got so excited they pushed through the bolts and jumped out to play with the dog! Thankfully, the first floor had awnings over all the windows so they bounced off of them on the way down. My dog is a lot older and lazier now and I live on the first floor, but I still double check all the locks just in case.
Kai
- Spiritbox — Sun Killer
- Deep Purple — Space Truckin’
- Dance Gavin Dance — Chucky vs. The Giant Tortoise
- Emarosa — Givin’ Up
- ERRA — Dementia
What’s your motto in life
“Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
- Agent K, Men In Black
What made you choose web design as a career
I grew up with my parents working from home as graphic designers. I was playing around in Photoshop and QuarkXpress as soon as I was old enough to use a mouse and keyboard. I always had an eye for colors and loved art, drawing, painting, building things, etc… In college I got a job as an on-campus club web designer. Sophomore year I changed my major from Bio/Pre-med to Computer Science and the crossover of graphic design and computer science pretty naturally led to web design.
What’s your favorite recipe/home-cooked meal
This is a tough question for me, I think I’ll have to give two answers: my favorite meal to cook, and my favorite meal to eat. My favorite home-cooked meal to eat is probably my family’s homemade Caesar salad. My aunt and I have perfected our caesar dressing recipe over the last few years and Caesar salad has always been my favorite food, but salad dressing just isn’t that fun to make, ya know? My favorite home-cooked meal to cook would be my take on BA’s perfect thanksgiving turkey. Every year I’m in charge of my family’s thanksgiving meal — and the turkey is so much fun, seeing it all come together and tweaking it a little here and there is so satisfying, plus it’s so much easier than it looks so you get a lot of credit for not a ton of work.
Tell us a funny story about one of your pets
I grew up with 2–3 cats at all times at my dad’s house. My dad and step mom always had a preference for Bengals, which definitely led to a lot of entertainment since they are wild and unusual cats. Our backyard bordered open space outside of Boulder, CO so we had a ton of critters running around the yard, garage, and sometimes house. Notably, one of the cat’s favorites (and our least favorites were wolf spiders). I remember one lazy Sunday afternoon the youngest cat managed to snatch a big one, she proudly trotted downstairs to present her trophy to me, but the thing wasn’t entirely dead. So I’m laying on the couch and all I see is a cat appear out of nowhere, spring 5 feet vertically into the air and, by the time I sat up to see what had happened, she was long gone, spooked by the spider somehow.
Lindsey
- Death of a Strawberry — Dance Gavin Dance
- Hazey — Glass Animals
- Robin — DJ Cutman
- This is Gospel — Panic! At the Disco
- Taro — Alt-J
What’s your motto in life
“Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our viewpoint.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi
What made you choose web design as a career
I have always reveled in technology based things, even when I was small and my dad brought home our first monster of a computer. I was so fascinated with how it worked and this curiosity followed me into adulthood. This fascination combined with a love for art in all forms made me truly fall for web design.
What’s your favorite recipe/home-cooked meal
Hands down, my Grandmas Huckleberry Cobbler.
Tell us a funny story about one of your pets
A few years back my indoor cat went missing for a full day. I was distraught and thought for sure she had gotten out somehow. Right as we were going to bed that night, we heard a meow from the living room and she was happily (maybe knowingly) perched on the cat tree. It wasn’t until the next day that we found that she had found a way to get inside the walls of the house from a hole behind a bookshelf.
