Yes, But Who Am I?

At my core, I am a designer. I like a fine typeface and a smart logo. But at times I find myself a little different than your standard designer. I find myself drawn more and more to efficiency and analytics.

I taught myself to code at a young age, over Christmas break one year in middle school if I remember correctly. Even my first foray into design involved programming. A friend and I spent a summer going through a book about generating 3D animation through code.

I cut my teeth on 3D Studio for DOS and went on to study modeling and animation during my time at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Of course my time there was also spent on C++ and database administration. The graphics program there was split between Computer Science and Fine Arts.

After many, many sessions of Quake 3 and Counter-Strike, my roommate and I even set out to build a mod for Half-Life 2. He did code and I made models. For a time we both were going to pursue careers in game development. Life had different plans for the both of us, though.

After a short stint doing freelance animation I found myself as a staff designer at a design firm in Killeen, Texas. Many t-shirts were designed, and occasionally a website site or two just to scratch my coding itch. The last sixteen years have seen a progression from staff artist to art director. Now as the General Manager I find my analytical roots coming back out. Rather than finely tuning a layout or a block of type I tune the business to run it as efficiently as possible.