Tess Otten

1st-year Design Foundations Student 

      My name is Tess Otten and I’m a first year Design Foundations student pursuing Interior Design. I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I have been highly involved in Art as early as I can remember, specializing in oil painting and multimedia. I also fill much of my time outside of school and work with essentially anything outdoors, especially hiking, and traveling at every opportunity. Through my involvement in art in high school, I worked as a volunteer teaching assistant for 3rd and 4th grade art classes, and later received a Gold Key award in the 2022 Scholastics Art & Writing Awards. I discovered my love for design when many of my ideas, drawings, and inspiration began to focus on structures, buildings, and spaces from an early age. I eventually discovered and began using 3D Modeling programs to imagine and create spaces, which I’ve continued to do through the present.  After having considered alternative paths my college career could take, I feel guided by my skills and experiences to pursue Interior Design. 

During the school year, I currently work as a design apprentice for The Ohio State Honors & Scholars, where I utilize skills in the Adobe Suite to create graphics and small projects for the Ohio State Honors & Scholars programs. 

At its core, I see design as more than just the appearance or initial impression of the space, object, or concept it’s applied to. Design is all around us, whether that’s in a modern office building or on a hiking trail through the mountains and is perceived in a unique way by each individual. This is a perspective I’ve been lucky to see be proven numerous times though my lifelong love for travel and exploring the natural world, which are things that will undoubtedly add value to my design education here at Ohio State. I believe that design has the power to significantly impact the ways in which we interact and connect with our surrounding environment and each other. After my year equally full of learning curves and successes as a design foundations student, I am only more eager and above all, curious to dive deeper into how we can use design to foster healthy relationships between each other and our surrounding world.