Nikki Villagomez is a wife, mother, designer, typophile, blogger, author and nationally renowned speaker.
Nikki was born and raised in Greenville, SC. She left Greenville to attend Louisiana State University after being awarded a full tennis scholarship. At LSU Nikki played tennis, met her husband (on the men’s tennis team) and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design. After graduation, Nikki moved to New York City to begin her career as a designer. After 3 years in New York, she moved to Columbia, SC, where she worked as a freelance designer. During the 9 years that she lived in Columbia, Nikki founded the South Carolina Chapter of AIGA, served as its president for 2 years; and taught Graphic Design and Typography at the University of South Carolina for 5 years. Nikki and her family then relocated to Hudson, OH where she was offered a position as Senior Designer at Dixon Hughes Goodman. While in Ohio, she taught a semester of Typography at the University of Akron. Currently, Nikki is the Creative Studio Manager for Dixon Hughes Goodman at the firm’s headquarters in Charlotte, NC.
At heart, Nikki is a graphic designer with a deep and abiding love of typography. As the scope of her work and tools narrowed from freelancing with a kaleidoscope of colors and a vast reservoir of fonts, to being an in-house designer with a mere 2 fonts and 16 pantone colors, she found that she needed a creative outlet to feed her spirit and keep her inspired. She started writing a blog, which fueled by her guileless, enthusiastic response to letters, glyphs and signage, shares the anthropological insight of someone acutely attuned to her environment; and what it can teach us about both our past and our present. Nikki has a fondness for ghost signs, manhole covers and graffiti; and has a tendency to imbue the fonts she is discussing with personality traits in an effort to convey how she is affected by them. Her blog posts have garnered a following of like minded creatives, and buzz from the blog has led to various speaking engagements, podcasts, workshops and interviews. This resulted in Nikki writing a book which presents side-by-side travel photo comparisons that speak to the ways that culture influences typography.
Nikki Villagomez is a woman humbled by the widespread interest in her hobby, that has opened unforeseen doors to her. She is living proof that when you love something it shows, and will make a path for you to move forward and share it. In the future, she hopes to share her insights internationally with her talk ‘How Culture Affects Typography.’
Other Information
This Fall Nikki will return to South Carolina to share How Culture Affects Typography, during her session for Revolve Conference at Sterling Hall, located in the Upper Historic District of the City of Charleston.
Revolve Conference embraces, promotes and seeks to foster the interdependence between the Design, Business, and Marketing disciplines. The event features the gathering of disruptive thought leaders, talented speakers and trailblazers from around the country to share road-tested insights over three days.
Attendees can customize their personal agenda by choosing hands-on workshops on October 26, or keynotes and breakout sessions on October 27 & 28 with an aim to improve their craft, collaborate with industry peers, and learn cutting edge trends and best practices in a relatively short time.
