Design@Work

Gretchen Tatge at her desk, extracting scissors from 2-year old Melissa.

Since I can remember anything, I remember my mom working. She was a photographer and a graphic designer for 30 years. When I was little, she converted one small bedroom into her office, then later built a full-on dark room off the side of the house. My mother worked constantly — at night while we all watched TV together, all day on Saturdays photographing weddings, staying up late into the night processing film and photos in her new ‘modern’ dark room. She and my father — a writer and editor — produced the annual report for the Town of Greenwich for seven years straight in the 1970s.

I don’t remember my mom teaching me a stitch about design or how to do it, but I guess when you’re around something all the time it sort seeps in under the skin…or something. Here I am, decades later, doing exactly what she did and grateful to have gotten the design gene rather than the photography bug. Thankfully, my sister got that one.