I grew up in a small town in a flyover state. My blue collar father gave me an appreciation for greasy spoon diners, flea markets, dives, and a library of bad old movies which influence my sense of humor to this day. My saintly mother gave me a strong appreciation for nature, beautiful books, painting, and learning how to keep things simple. Before my adolescence was over I was hopelessly lost to classic video games, comics, pen and paper role-playing games and all sorts of nerdery you don’t see many coming back from (I still haven’t).
I studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, and later at Kansas State University where I earned a not-so-useful degree in Sociology, just in time for the great recession. After years of part-time retail and service work in the wake of the recession, I eventually caught a break. Some old friends came back into town and together we founded an indie newspaper in Manhattan, Kansas. For two years I broke myself on the wheel of Indesign and re-learned the Creative Suite the hard way, forging practical skills in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Sadly, in spite of community support and generous backers, the paper’s management couldn’t go the distance, and I moved on into commercial product design. I spent the next five years working upward from a production background. I learned step from design to production finish the steps for designing embroidery for sportswear, t-shirts prints, glassware decals, and hundreds of other promotional products for the booming craft beer industry with Grandstand, where I eventually was promoted into a creative director role in their in-house agency 88 Design Group.
Shortly after, I began working in product design as a senior designer and illustrator for Open Road Brands. I’ve broadened my portfolio working with some top pop culture IP including Coca Cola, Big Boy, Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Sony, Fox, Paramount and many more. Later I moved into a role in the events industry as a designer for print and web collateral supporting corporate events around the country through the experience division of the tech company Augeo. There my clients for events ranged from Toyota to immunotherapy companies like Dendreon, and I happily provided branding, thematic environmental design and other support for their seasonal staff events and celebrations.
Today I’m freelancing and hungry for more so if you’d like to put someone on retainer: