Daily Inspiration: Meet Edith Manfred

Today we’d like to introduce you to Edith Manfred.

Hi Edith, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in Pennsylvania in a family of both artists and runners, which has always made those two passions my natural modes of self expression.

My jumping off point into a creative career happened at Grier School, an all-girls boarding school where I attended high school in Pennsylvania. Surrounded by artists, dancers and musicians, I realized that my passion for storytelling could take form in visual expressions of photography and graphic design. Meanwhile, I was working hard to compete in cross country and track and field out of both a passion for running, and realizing that it could help fund my artistic ambitions in college.

It was an absolute dream come true to find a way to both run cross country and track at the collegiate level, and study my passions in art school, all at SCAD. This past spring I graduated with my B.F.A. in Photography from SCAD Savannah, and I’ve just made the move to Atlanta this fall to start a one-year M.A. from SCAD Atlanta in Graphic Design and Visual Experience, while running for their XC/TF teams here.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
While I’ve always felt encouraged and supported by my family, the journey to Atlanta has not been linear. I started my undergraduate degree in Savannah, assuming that I would complete a four year degree there. Two summers ago, my teammates and I learned that our athletic department would be restructured so that SCAD’s cross country and track teams would only be at the Atlanta campus. I intensely debated how best to move forward: should I stay in Savannah and give up collegiate running, or take a risk by moving to Atlanta and pursuing my athletic dreams with a new team?
Ultimately, I decided to graduate a year early and pursue a master’s degree here in Atlanta. It feels like a leap of faith, but an exciting one. Artistically, I feel that I’m open to any adventure, and I feel confident that my curiosity about how to best tell the stories that matter will lead me where I’m meant to be.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At heart, I’m a visual storyteller, and the mediums that I feel best communicate my stories are photography, writing and graphic design. Currently, my work often centers around storytelling with athletes, showing the narratives and inner workings that get someone both onto and off of the starting line.
Over this past year I’ve been able to use my personal experience within the distance running world to create a body of work about how sport affects athletes’ self perception. It’s been deeply personal, but has also opened me up to my teammates’ experiences with running and athletics. The photos and writing from this body of work, titled “At The Intersection” are on my website.
Visually, my work is known for bright colors and compositions that simplify a complex scene. My creative work is often interdisciplinary, as I love communicating ideas through a variety of mediums. Video, photo, illustration, graphics of letterforms: I see the world through all of these lenses and therefore express it as such. As I study graphic design and visual experience here in Atlanta, I’m excited to see how my work will become more complex and experiential.
Curiosity is the through-line of my creative work. No matter the subject or medium, I simply love hearing others’ experiences and translating them into visually engaging and impactful storytelling. I intend on pursuing a variety of career paths, all within the artistic-athletic space. Publication work, brand development, creative direction and even data design all feel like paths I’m excited to dive into.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I feel blessed to have grown up in a family of artistic people who naturally expressed our emotions and experiences through creative work. On every family trip my parents made a point of visiting the local art museum, and we were simply always creating together. My mom is an incredibly talented and driven painter, and her willingness to experiment and be bold in pursuit of self expression inspires me daily.
I find it rather funny how today nearly all of my professional pursuits and creative fields can be linked back to weird obsessions I had as a kid. Both of my parents would always be reading a magazine at lunch (for my dad: The Atlantic, for my mom: Vogue) and now, I find myself passionately pursuing creative work in the publication industry. As a kid I obsessively kept journals, diaries and sketchbooks of everything in my life. I felt an almost impulsive need to document how I saw the world, which is how I originally started practicing photography. It showed others exactly what I saw and how I saw it. Now, my love for photography is far less of a necessary impulse and far more out of a genuine curiosity about the world and interest in sharing my perspective with others. I find it so fulfilling that all of these areas of interest have translated into fields of study that are showing me how to impact the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.edithnobledesign.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edithnobledesign/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edith-noble-manfred-8a8671382/