I'm now over 10 years in and I still love bringing ideas to life via well thought out design! I started my career as an industrial designer working at small design and manufacturing agency, with some of the top luxury brands in the world as clients. I honed my eye for design and ability to get things shipped, working mostly on packaging, high end retail displays and installations, from initial concept to delivered products.
Feeling I had reached my ceiling and wanting to throw myself into another adventure, I packed my bags and headed out to Colorado where I set up shop and began solo freelancing in both industrial design and some graphic design working for clients both old and new along the way.
Fast forward to today and I'm off on another adventure, as I pivot yet again to the world of UI / UX. The tools may be different, but the intuition of a designer's eye built through experience carries on.
Coming from a design background that deals primarily with creating solutions for the everyday physical world has meant I've spent countless thousands of hours in 3d modeling and rendering software. I still love pushing my skillset and learning new things in this realm. I've recently started getting back into mesh modeling and rendering in Blender a popular tool that integrates well with web design workflows!
Shown at left are a delicious 80's themed donut built and rendered in Blender with Cycles and an art deco themed retro speedboat designed by me, built in SolidWorks and rendered in Keyshot 6.
In 2013 a friend out of the blue asked me if I wanted to join him in climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa with him for his birthday. The trip also had the goal of helping to raise money and awareness for the economic empowerment of farming families in the area via a water pump lease to buy program being organized by a non-profit called The Adventure Project.
Naturally I jumped at the chance! Our goal was to raise $30,000 via various corporate and personal sponsorships for the climb. In the end we fell short of our target goal, but we did manage to raise over $15,000 for the cause! Aside from our success in reaching the summit, the chance to be immersed in a culture completely different from my own for a few weeks is one I'll never forget. It's taught me to see the American culture I am swimming in every day with new eyes.
One of the many reasons I love mountain biking so much is that its in the moment embodied problem solving, on the fly with real consequences for choosing poorly. As in, you have to be constantly balancing lots of different variables like body weight distribution, speed, awareness of the natural terrain, in real time so that you don't fall over and hurt yourself! Living in Colorado for nearly 5 years I was able to get out to some breath taking and in many cases remote locations. It's an amazing way to engage with the natural world.
I've found many parallels with being out on the trail and being immersed in a design work. It's all about engaging the process time and time again so that you can learn by experience how to deal with the inevitable curve balls the trail / or a client might throw at you.
