The Design Team’s Mika Schmeling

Name: Mika Schmeling

Year: 3

Degree: Joint honours Computer science and Management 

Hometown: San Diego

What is the Design team and what exactly is your role within it? 

We just basically do a bunch of designs for all uni affiliated groups and they can just send in requests and we work on them. We put on other workshops as well where we teach Photoshop, illustrator, all of the above for adobe. Those are on Sundays, there are photography workshops on Wednesdays and then we have a few craft workshops sprinkled throughout; i’m in charge of those. But yeh I’m the vice-president. 

What do you like / dislike about your role? 

I like getting to help people because it makes me feel cool

Better than everyone else?

Yeh makes me feel better. No, I just like it because I get to do design and i’ve been playing with photoshop for a long time and I never really actually learned the stuff, I just slowly picked it up and so I never had anyone teaching me how to do that stuff and I wish I did. So it’s really cool to be able to do that with people. Dislike? It’s every Sunday so I can’t leave for the weekend. 

How would you recommend our her campus readers get involved in the design team? 

Probably just go if you go on our Facebook page – St Andrews Design Team. We’re trying to come up with an official name because there’s like five different names right now and we have to change our constitution which has to be an EGM but our constitution is currently lost. We found that out like last week. But I believe our official name of Facebook is St Andrews Design Team. 

Favourite book: Love Letters to the Dead – Ava Dellaira. It’s a classic little teen novel because those are the best. They’re easy to read, especially with all the uni stress.

Favourite movie: I’ve been on a ‘Moulin Rouge’ kick. I’ve watched it like three times… This month. 

Favourite place in St Andrews: The dank cave. It’s on castle sands. It’s really cool and I sometimes just sit there. The sunrise is gorgeous from it so if I can’t sleep I just go and watch the sunrise. 

Something on your St Andrews bucket list: I’ve never actually gone to Szentek, i’m going this year. 

Plans for the future/ dream job: Dream job is to start my own publication. I really like rock music and alternative stuff. So if you’ve ever heard of ‘Kerrang!’? It’s like an alternative rock music magazine and my dream would be to mix that with a Buzzfeed type publication, we’d do a lot of videos, articles, quizzes, test, interviews but have it more online based than physically based. 

Dream vacation: Dubai. 

Three things you can’t live without: My dog Lulu, Netflix – I feel like that’s really common but definitely Netflix- and wine, I love wine. I feel like I can’t justify earlier drinking with rum. I can justify having a glass of wine whilst watching a movie at like two in the afternoon but not anything else. I just really like wine; my academic kids call me wine Mum sometimes.

Guilty pleasure: I never stopped liking old music and so if you put on like any Disney like Hannah Montana, ‘Camp Rock’, all of the above. 

• creative
• design
• photoshop
• society
• standrews