Relentless Pursuit

Adrian Pelletier '07
B.F.A., Graphic Design
Founder of Build Interactive, Wolfeboro, N.H.

I grew up in New Hampshire and love the outdoors—visiting Colby-Sawyer's beautiful campus during my college search sealed the deal. It was the perfect size, both inside and outside of the classroom, and everyone was so friendly.

Being recognized as an individual rather than just another student was important to me.

College gives you four years to turn into whatever you want while surrounded by resources: fellow students, professors, the library, everything. My best piece of advice for incoming students is to find what interests you and relentlessly pursue it. If you just do what professors assign, you're not going to be smarter than anyone else. Professors do a good job of bringing you to the door, but you have to take the next step and pursue your interests.

I really enjoyed my professors at Colby-Sawyer; they are passionate about what they teach. I've never met a professor more willing to help students than Loretta Barnett. She always went the extra step and even sent me job leads long after I graduated. Professor Bert Yarborough was great, too. I would have my ruler handy to create perfect line drawings but he'd give me a twig he'd found, dip it in ink, and say, “Draw that with your left hand.” His lesson was to explore what you're not comfortable with and to push yourself.

Creating an online portfolio and completing an internship are absolute musts. Having a polished website that showed my work is what landed me my internships and my first job out of college. I did three internships and at every one of them I made sure I was the first person in the office and the last to leave every day. I made it a point to talk to the CEO and the creative director and ask what they were doing, how they were managing their jobs, getting work. Input equals output! I turned one of those internships into a full-time job that started a week after graduation. I was there for about a year and a half and went from a designer to creative director.

In 2009 I started working for myself full time and I've been flat out ever since.