Bits & Pieces
Monica Ong is a 20-something graphic artist/illustrator/art director/web designer & front-end web developer living in one of the many islands of sunny (or rainy) Philippines. Unless coaxed by friends, family, duties burdening fellow adults – otherwise known to many as adulting – or traveling to another country, you would rarely see her outside her cave. Spends most of her time reading, painting, designing, observing, learning new stuff, playing video games, hanging out with her dog, traveling, trying out new recipes, & countless other things.
Her philosophy is to keep learning and to never stop persevering! 🙂
Education
She studied at St. Peter the Apostle School from nursery to high school, plus another 4 years in De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde in Taft to get her Bachelor of Arts – Multimedia Arts degree. Persevered to be part of the dean’s list for a couple of terms & won 3rd place top illustrator in a Multimedia Arts Competition called MMA Awards.
Professional Life
It started with an offer of an internship in Benilde’s animation department, which she declined because she wanted to go outside of her comfort zone. She ended up working for 2-3 weeks as an intern in 7th Media – a creative studio in Makati. After graduating though, she opted to find a job in another firm and she ended up working in Carbon Digital, Inc.
Carbon is most likely where she grew the most as an individual & as a designer-web developer. Started from the bottom as a junior interactive designer, she continuously worked & improved herself till she became a senior designer and then, finally, an art director. Through the years, she has taught more or less 10 interns & juniors while working on her own load of projects for days, weeks, and months. She pursued her freelancing career & steadily improved her illustrations during her free times.
After 4 years of working with one company, she decided to leave and move on to pursue other interests – Working on freelance projects, learning new crafts like leather crafting, creating her own products, & slowly but surely, building a business with 2 of her closest friends. She’s no stranger to working in an office and if it comes down to it, she knows she’ll be back in the workforce when the time comes.
P.S. She does all of this for her dog, Mishka.
