My only aim, is to make people happy. That’s it. That’s my resume. (I have receipts.)
Based in Northern California, (but working in multiple time zones) I make my living as a Creative Director, Designer, Inventor and Idea Guy. 3 decades of “Surprise and Delight” for my clients, consumers and users. I love Art, Technology, Reading, Jazz, Toys and Games, Redwoods, Cooking, Simplicity, Sustainability, Making things, Films, Craft Beer, Quiet time, Kindness, and the band Wilco, for starters…. My “TAKE FIVE” page is probably pretty revealing about me.
I am a lifelong MAKER. An optimist, a dreamer and occasionally, an idealist. (I tend to approach things as a “techno-utopianist,” but with latent luddite tendencies.) More than a handful of employers and clients of mine have referred to me at times as a Swiss Army Knife. (……a moniker I’m not quick to dismiss.) I think of myself as a generalist, who is highly skilled in MANY disciplines. Perhaps a specialist in a good handful of things. (But I know when to seek the assistance of a REAL specialist, when I need more firepower for specific work.)
For my entire adult life, I’ve been filling sketchbooks with ideas. Dozens and dozens of them, in various states of disrepair. The spines always seem to be the first to fall apart. Then the iPad came along a few years back and changed everything for me! (Especially later with the addition of the Apple Pencil and ProCreate app!) Before the iPad, one would seldom ever find me without a black sketchbook of some size or another. (And in my shirt pocket, a black Uniball pen and a mechanical pencil. It’s the reason they put pockets on shirts!) I still use an old school sketchbook quite often, alongside the iPad. There are still multiple writing implements in my shirt pocket.
I’ve recently begun to create art for PLEASURE again. Paintings, in acrylics and watercolors mostly… with some ink brought into the mix at times. I’ve managed to pick up a few commissions, but most of the work is really for my own enjoyment. (That is until I stack up enough canvases and painted wood to attempt a show somewhere down the road!) Jazz seems to be a subject that I paint a lot. Like my eclectic design work and the industries I’ve served over the years, my “style” isn’t really a style at all… I tend to paint in whatever mood I’m in when I start a piece, and the style is almost always different. (Although I will say that much of my art is pushing more and more towards “abstraction” these days.) I’ll post some pix on an “ART” page sometime as soon as the paint dries…..
I might be described as something like a secular humanist, with no use for religion, but I’m certainly in awe of all the wonder and beauty in the universe! (This, despite being raised in a “fire and brimstone” flavor of Bible-Belt nonsense. Thankfully, I grew out of it…) Perhaps it was the love I developed for science fiction which ultimately helped me escape the superstitions of my youth. I love how sci-fi and speculative fiction can influence real life, science and technology! And vice-versa. Along these lines, I hope that I live long enough to at LEAST see our dumb species figure out how to become a Type I Civilization on the Kardashev scale. (But probably not until long after I’ve been buried in a redwood forest!)