Julie Ridl

Senior Strategist and Editor
Md-julie
Julie Ridl studied ancient history, classical literature, storytelling, folk tales, fiction writing, and journalism. These are all related pursuits. She has worked in every kind of communications office that the corporate and agency communities have conceived during the past three decades, including employee communications, investor relations, public relations, organizational dynamics, learning offices, marketing communications groups, knowledge management groups, web development groups, and information technology groups. Some of these groups she managed. She has spent a lot of time working in office furniture and online communities, and ultimately boils her work down to one task... storytelling. People respond to good stories and great timing, or at least sensitive timing. She's really been working on that one thing in all these ways all this time. She is our chief empath, spending much of her time listening to our customers and their customers, and figuring out what everybody needs. When she's not knitting stories together, she's actually knitting, often while Jack reads to her, and with one or two of four possible pets on her lap, sometimes in the company of grownup type kids, Meridith and Jason, who do visit, but never often enough.

Speaking/Teaching
PDMA West Michigan
AMA West Michigan
Hope College
JournalCon

Featured in these Books, Magazines, Newspapers
Interaction Design
Graphis' designagencies.com
Secrets of Successful Websites
Red Herring
Fortune
Health
NY Times
Washington Post
Tales from the Scale

Awards
AIGA
American Center for Design
Communications Arts
Creativity
Critique
Graphis
How
Print
Step Magazine

 
Affiliations
AIGA
AMA West Michigan
Ad Club, West Michigan
Ravelry.com
ideas ยป Julie
printfreegraphpaper.com
I didn’t grow up with the Internet. It came after most of my learning habits had been wired in. But once I had access, I never looked back. My online days began wallowing about in Gopher at my college, getting happily lost in link layers, following my nose and reading… a lot. Learning a lot. [...]

Poetry Blitz
It’s April 1, and in our family’s world, that means the start of National Poetry Month, and the day is observed beginning at midnight, when poets paste poetry in unusual and startling places for all the world to see… So here is a poem for today by the great and small Naomi Shihab Nye, who ought [...]

Twitter Stalking is Good
Twitter is great for keeping up with buddies, true. It works not unlike the status messages on Facebook, where you can leave a breadcrumb trail for your buddies and family. “So you never actually have to pick up the phone!” points out my sister, a new Facebook user. But Twitter’s message trail is public and far [...]