Design became a form of therapy, a way of making things perfect in an imperfect world

I grew up in a suburban New Jersey town just like any other (although a few episodes of Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Pete & Pete were filmed there). I spent my days zipping through the neighborhood on my bike, chasing the cat around the house, and watching Hulk Hogan and the Macho Man point fingers in each other’s faces every Saturday morning. As a teen, I picked up a skateboard and fell head first into the culture (the grass never returned in the backyard where I used to have a half-pipe… sorry Dad). Getting that CCS catalog in the mail and pouring over the freshest decks and t-shirts was my monthly ritual. The art was loud, crass, and the brands that produced them all had cool names like Toy Machine, Alien Workshop, and Spitfire. Everything was made by guys and gals not much older than me, which was truly inspiring.

This drive for art and design led me to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. UArts exposed me to a whole world of like-minded people who not only shared my interests, but also a creative culture that embraced open dialogue, the ability to challenge convention, and the ethics of responsible creativity. These were the type of people that I wanted to surround myself with, the types of personalities that made work seem not like “work.” Design became a form of therapy, a way of making things perfect in an imperfect world, and a way to change people’s perception about how they interpreted the world around them. Colors, composition, typography, scale, the relationships between these things and how they integrated into their environment all became tools needed to solve complex and often intangible problems.

I still don’t believe that those early developmental years are behind me, and I don’t want them to be. I still want to be surprised. I still want to be surrounded by amazing people and projects. I still want to learn and grow from the experiences that they bring. I want to share with everyone what it means to use creativity as a hammer and a feather at the same time. Shouldn’t we all?