I'm a self taught designer and a classically trained artist that who to art school to study painting, where words like purple, brown, and pink didn’t exist in a world of violet, pastel red, not pink, and brown is a desaturated yellow, orange, red, and sometimes violet. I am a color-loving color theory nerd who still likes to make palettes using color-aid swatches and all their toxic chemical coated colorful goodness.

I started my design career doing mechanical design for medical devices and equipment from cardiac arrest defibrillators to enteral feeding pumps to physical therapy rehabilitation tools. I also designed cases, PCB boards, control pads, to molds for mass producing parts. Thinking back on it, it feels a little surreal that they were letting some 18 year old kid design literal life saving equipment. My interest in color was realized very quickly while flipping through the Pantone® swatches and picking from the various neutral medical grade colors of tan, beige, and other super exciting shades of warm grays and light browns. When I would get to the bright, artificial colors of reds, blues, intense violets, I knew that I wanted to work with color.

Starting my career in commercial arts, I worked at a local print shop doing pre-press, where I learned how to do color separations, trapping, and all the things in between to get a client's job on the presses. I learned the design basics and the “what not to do’s” very quickly at the expense of other designers and professionals getting their work printed.