More About Me.
Growing up in Salem, Oregon - aptly described once as the sensible shoe of the Willamette Valley - I chose to get as far away as possible and traded in the wet, gloomy winters of the PNW for the frigid, lifeless winters of Western Massachusetts. After graduating from the most expensive college in the country, I walked away with crippling debt and a proud degree in Photography from Hampshire College. Having had enough of snow 8 months out of the year, I loaded up my truck and drove back out West.
I bounced up and down the I-5 corridor for a few years before landing a job at a sports photography company in Beaverton. Five years of honing my Photoshop skills cleaning up bad photography felt like more than enough, so I decided a career change was in order and enrolled in the Communication Design program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. I had the great fortune of being taught by some truly amazing professors including a game changing study abroad in Tokyo.
I hit the ground running after graduation, landing a job at Kore Group, a promotional marketing and brand management company in Portland. I was their first designer and became responsible for just about everything art related that came through the door. Since I had that expensive Photography degree laying around, I suggested we stop using stock photos in our marketing and website and instead offered to just let me do it. That eventually led to product photography for client websites. I'm proud of the small part I played pulling in millions of dollars of revenue over the years.
Ten years in, Kore Group was acquired by Renton based Kaye-Smith, a regional player looking to expand their promotional marketing business. Now I was in charge of branding for two companies. That included art directing the redesign of both company websites, shooting video and photography for the sites, even more product photography, and self-promotion campaigns, all while doing day-to-day design work for clients. Some of that work was for sexy clients like Nike and Adidas. A lot of it was blue collar design work; cleaning up client files, making sure they were in the correct color space and had bleed. It's not glamorous work that makes it into my portfolio, but it keeps the gears moving smoothly, and saves everyone time. And we all know time is money.
Despite the seasonal affected disorder that hits hard by February, I've got no plans to leave the dreary, wonderful Pacific Northwest.