Meet Leigh Huster, QIP Creative Director
As QIP’s Creative Director, Leigh Huster’s focus is on creating content that is accessible and engaging.
Leigh is a project manager for multiple clients, often taking a big-picture look at developing content strategy, marketing, and other creative output. Leigh is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), and they lead QIP’s graphics team, which creates items such as videos and infographics.
“Making content that is accessible is a huge part of what we're doing,” Leigh said. “But I think along with accessibility is creating engaging content.”
“I think that's important,” they said, “because there's a lot of really great information we get to create videos and infographics and web pages about—and whether or not those are easy to read, visually and through plain language, is a huge part of that.
“Because much of our work relates to education and data collection, it’s even more important because schools, districts, and politicians look for this information to be distilled in such a way that it’s accessible.”
Leigh said one of their more memorable projects was contributing to interim redesign concepts for the website for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education. “I thought that work was especially interesting and meaningful,” they said.
Part of the goal was to re-envision aspects of the website so that the interface was not appropriate only for the research community.
“It's built for all sorts of audiences, and I think it's nice to be part of work that is forward thinking,” Leigh said. “It's content that’s helping to make information relevant, reliable, easy to read, and accessible to a larger audience. It goes beyond the common definition of 508 compliance.”
(Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires all federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.)
As a manager, Leigh finds it important to model the work-life balance that QIP promotes.
“I want people to have balance,” they said. “If I can make people’s days better by not making their jobs hard and we are able to create quality work, then I think that’s a success.”
Leigh said QIP has created a work environment with empathy while the company’s values allow staff to perform at a high level. “And I really like the people I work with, and I think the work we do is important,” they said.
Leigh has been with QIP since November 2011, working as a writer, designer, communications specialist, and communications manager before becoming creative director. They are proficient using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and many other web applications and tools.
Before joining QIP, Leigh worked as a writer and spent a year in Korea as an English teacher. They earned their bachelor’s degree in English from Marquette University.
Read Leigh's insights about balancing creativity and project management on our blog.
