Nicholas Cristo Creative

I earned my B.A. in Graphic Design from California State University, where I also completed two internships as a Graphic Designer with the CSU Office of Public Affairs. After freelancing for several years, I joined a prominent Seattle digital marketing agency in a web design role. Over time, I've expanded my expertise to include user experience, visual design, front-end development, and project management. For several years I also served as the creative lead for an operational design team building custom enterprise web applications.

Today, I am a Senior Experience Designer and Experience Architect for Fortune 500 Tech company where I lead design and strategy efforts on customer-facing consultations, guiding project teams and clients to create innovative, user-centric solutions that align with business objectives and user needs. I emphasize Design Thinking principles to drive impactful outcomes and strategic vision, conducting comprehensive UX research through interviews, workshops, and other methods to understand user behaviors, needs, and motivations. I create personas, narratives, and journey maps to inform decision-making, and lead the development of prototypes and proofs of concept across a range of products and solutions, ensuring a seamless and elevated user experience throughout the customer journey.

For me, design is more than just a career or a hobby—it's a way of life, an obsession, and an intense, lifelong passion.

My Journey

I've been building things all my life. As a child, it started with Legos, Construx, and Lincoln Logs. But in the 90s, when the internet became mainstream, I ventured into digital creation. Geocities was my gateway drug.

Along with my love for creating, I was captivated by all manner of fiction—comic books, fantasy and scifi, Marvel trading cards, and Saturday morning cartoons. These interests nurtured a passion for storytelling. As I grew older, I dreamed of making comics and superhero cartoons, writing books and screenplays, and creating games. Ultimately, I've always wanted to create something special and unique to share with the world.

As an adult, my career has centered around visual and experiential storytelling in the form of Graphic Design and User Experience. My competencies in UX and user-centered design allow me to craft stories of experience—stories that contribute to a larger narrative of society's universal mythos. By day, I weave stories on the web, and by night, I write more personal, passionate tales, inspired by the fictional influences that shaped my childhood.