At an early age, I was in love with fine arts. I jumped head first into art programs in grade school, exploring my interests in painting and printmaking with fevered tenacity. Pressure from my parents drove me to explore other interests, a path that led to the pursuit of a Journalism degree from the University of Florida. Always fascinated by communication and the written word, I felt that Journalism fulfilled all my goals, and I planned to ultimately explore layout design and typography. After taking a design job on campus (and not enjoying reporting all that much), I discovered that design was a better way to explore my interests, and that my skills in art, math and communication aligned in a new way. I switched majors and never looked back.
As an avid bicyclist, cook and painter, I spend my free time reading, creating, exploring the world and playing the occasional video game. I still love to write and one day hope to find an outlet for that love. I aspire to perfect my cheesecake recipe. In five years time, I hope to look back and say that I took every opportunity over those 1,826 days to learn something new from everyone and everything around me.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm a big thinker. My strength as a communicator lies in my pursuit of knowledge, and oftentimes the research and development phase of a design project is where I get my motivation. I've disciplined myself to dive into production with a strong goal and an end product in crisp focus. I love making mock-ups and working with spatial details—I find thinking dimensionally keeps me going. I love talking about my work. There's nothing more exciting to me than presenting something I've invested in. I hope that's something I never grow out of. How can we be communicators if we don't love communicating?
Outside is happenstance—what happens inside is evolution. I feel so strongly that creativity is fueled by circumstance and setting, chance and opportunity. The challenge is to take the little spark and make it flare into dramatic results by molding, nurturing and growing with it. In the end, I find it's affected me as much as I've affected it.