Lauren Serota on Turning 30 and Letting Go of Expectations

In Chapter 19 of 21 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, creative director and educator Lauren Serota answers "What is on Your Mind as You Turn 30 This Year?" Serota looks at turning 30 as an opportunity for reflection and to assess where she has been, where she is, and where she wants to go. She looks at relationships, her work experience, and accomplishments and makes it a point to focus on what she has done versus what others have done.

Lauren Serota works as an associate creative director at frog design. She is also a teacher at the Austin Center for Design (AC4D). Serota earned a bachelor's degree in industrial design from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

Lauren Serota on Thinking About Your Biological Clock At Age 30

In Chapter 20 of 21 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, creative director and educator Lauren Serota answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing As You Get Older?" Now 30 years old, Serota shares how she thinks differently about her relationship and starting a family than she did when she was in her late twenties. The biological clock considerations for having a family now are more real in her own life. As her friends' kids grow into 6 and 7 year-old children, she starts to think more seriously about having kids. She also comes to appreciate the lifestyle she has built for herself in Austin that has allowed her to balance working at frog with teaching design.

Lauren Serota works as an associate creative director at frog design. She is also a teacher at the Austin Center for Design (AC4D). Serota earned a bachelor's degree in industrial design from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

Lauren Serota on Blending Life Passions and Career Goals

In Chapter 21 of 21 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, creative director and educator Lauren Serota answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?" Serota shares how work and life experiences integrate together into how she lives her life. She notes how life outside work - from exercise and cycling to personal relationships to traveling - inform life inside work and vice versa. As a creative leader, she looks to always learn and figure out the right homeostasis between her work and life that keeps her simultaneously happy and challenged.

Lauren Serota works as an associate creative director at frog design. She is also a teacher at the Austin Center for Design (AC4D). Serota earned a bachelor's degree in industrial design from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

Why Choose SCAD to Study Industrial Design - Lauren Serota

In Chapter 4 of 18 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, interaction designer and researcher Lauren Serota shares who she came to choose Savannah College of Art and Design, or SCAD, for college. Interested in industrial design, Serota also considers another top school, the Rhode Island School of Design, or RISD. Ultimately, the curriculum, culture, and location inform her decision to stuy in Savannah. Serota is an interaction designer at frog design - http://frogdesign.com - and a professor at the Austin Center for Design - http://ac4d.com . She earned her bachelors degree in industrial design from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

Transcription: 

Erik Michielsen:  Why did you choose to study at the Savannah College of Art and Design instead of RISD?

Lauren Serota:  So I found out about the Savannah College of Art and Design.  I was in high school.  I really liked making stuff.  I was into sculpture.  I had a fantastic art teacher who pretty much gave me my own – like she made my own class, so she’s like ‘we’re gonna make a 3D design II just for you, and you can go play with clay all day and build things out of wood.  So she knew that I wanted – I knew that I wanted to build things or make things for a living, and she knew that I was probably going down that path as well, and so we had people from SCAD that came to my high school.  And I knew that I wanted to go to art school. 

I looked at like, you know, the local state schools like ASU, U of A, and then RISD was in the ranks, and then the SCAD people came, and I had never heard of the school prior to them.  And I said ‘oh, this is kind of a cool option.’  They have this budding industrial design program.  It seems it’s something I might be into.  I’m gonna go visit colleges, so I’ll visit RISD and I’ll visit SCAD.  So I went to RISD first, and, you know, it’s a beautiful campus.  It’s in Providence.  It’s hilly.  They have this great program at Brown where you can go take classes at Brown.  It was really compelling, but I just didn’t like the northeast.  I never gelled with the people, and the industrial design program my perception then was that it was really more based on form giving and style and making things beautiful in the sculpture of product. 

And when I went out to SCAD, first of all, I fell in love with the city.  Savannah is beautiful, warm, with weird stuff going on, the Spanish moss, it’s kind of spooky, and so I loved that.  And then the industrial design program was focused on process.  So it was like ‘oh we have a problem that we’re solving by – you know, we’re going through this process to solve the problem, at the end of it is a product,’ and now I know that at the end of it is a product, a service, a reorganization, or nothing, but I really appreciated that there was this – the kind of regimented, scientific thing that they went through that made a lot of sense, and it started with the people. 

So I started learning about the people, that were going to be using the thing that they’re making, and they explained it really well.  And the program was growing, they were moving into a new building, and it just seemed like something I wanted to be a part of.  It just seemed like the right fit.