As you read, you’ll find that my bio is full of life experiences and fond memories. I include these experiences partly to relive them as get older but to also inspire my students and children to see that a career isn’t just about the work. It’s about the people and the experiences along the way.

Being a designer is much more than pushing type and art around a page or screen. It’s communicating with wonderful people around the globe. It’s connecting. It’s worldly, engaging, rich, and satisfying.

---

Art Direction & Brand Management

A large portion of my design career has been spent working in corporate creative/art departments. I began in a paste-up department as a keyliner, then gained valuable experience as a layout artist, prepress artist, production art assistant manager, graphic artist, designer, product manager, and finally settled in as an art director.

As an art director, I designed, art directed, and managed in-house corporate brands and adapted outside brands to fit licensed product lines. My accounts included Nickelodeon, Garfield, NFL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR, NCAA, NHL, WNBA, MLS, Pro Wrestling (WCW), the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games, Looney Tunes, Rugrats, Rugrats the Movie, Peanuts, Scooby-Doo, and several Warner Bros. movies including Batman, Space Jam and The Quest for Camelot.

As a product manager, I worked as part of our product development team to research, conceptualize, test, design, cost, implement and ultimately launch the marketing campaigns of several new products each year. Our team was also responsible to track product success, redesigning, and updating, as well as ongoing analysis and monitoring.

Learning while having fun

A special moment in my career came while directing a licensed product launch for a newly acquired Garfield license. An “immerse yourself in the brand” trip to Paws, Inc., in Muncie, Indiana, led to a memorable creative session with Garfield creator Jim Davis. It was an experience of a lifetime that forever impacted how I viewed the creative process. As a young art director in my mid-twenties, I was given the wonderful gift to engage with, and see, first-hand, the creative process of the world’s most popular cartoonist.

During a boardroom meeting to negotiate the licensing contract, Jim and I noticed each other daydreaming a little. The legal stuff apparently wasn’t for us. So Jim asked me to join him at the end of the huge conference table, opposite the legal negotiations. While the others negotiated, Jim pulled out a sketch pad and asked me for some product ideas and concepts.

For the next half hour or so, I threw out ideas and headlines while Jim sketched Garfield in poses with props and apparel to match. If I offered a mediocre idea, which many were, Jim would politely suggest something better or improve upon my idea and draw that. His humility and grace impressed me. He most likely knew what the art should look like and what he wanted it to say. But he took this time to hear my ideas and try to nurture my thoughts and creative process. My collaboration with Jim has forever influenced my interactions with my students and my own children. Jim made me feel like an equal. An equal creative partner. Even though he had achieved far more than me career-wise, he didn’t see it that way. He saw me as an equal human being. I treat my students and kids the same. We’re all at different stages in our lives, from a teacher’s and father’s perspective, the only thing that matters is nurturing and growth. Progress, not perfection.

During our creative session, I remember also being amazed by his initial sketches. While they looked kind of like Garfield, they were anything but finished. They were just rough pencil sketches. I learned the idea was the most important part and the details, while important, would come later. Without a sound idea or message, the product is just rote craftsmanship.

I also learned that the large majority of the time Jim and his writing partner wrote the words first. Not always, but most of the time. Many artists, including myself, are used to drawing and creating art first and then seeing how it can fit the words/story/or message. From that day forward, I always thought of the message first.

Still, to this day I train my college graphic design students to think of the message they are trying to communicate FIRST and then create their designs, drawings, illustrations, videos, animations, music, etc. second.

Developing the Garfield product line was one of the many high points in my life as an artist.

---

Other fond memories in my art director career include attending annual licensing events. These events were designed to immerse the attendees in the property’s brand culture and help art directors and designers better understand how to adapt the brand to licensed products. Some of my most memorable events were: riding the official Olympic bobsled run in Park City, UT (going 55 mph—quite scary!); NASCAR’S 25th-anniversary dinner and party in the Rainbow Room in New York (we also went to a live taping of Letterman); Warner Bros. licensing party for the opening of Batman in Burbank, CA, (complete with some Hollywood glitz and huge ice sculptures of the Batman car and logo); Nickelodeon’s licensing party for Rugrats the Movie, in Orlando, FL. (Devo played live and reminded me that we all grow old—but can still have fun); and WCW’s licensing weekend in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, where I got to interact with the “talent,” chat with Bill Goldberg and have a beer with “Mean” Gene Okerlund about Baron Von Rashke and Mad Dog Vashon—“Hey, I thought this stuff was real!?”

While the hands-on (and eyes-on) brand-culture education these events provided was invaluable, these events also provided the fondest memories of my corporate art career. Throughout, I always made it a point to have fun first, meet new people, experience new things, get inspired, and live life. Designing was what I (and my very talented staff) did after the fun—and it made the work that much more enjoyable.

Designing and Building Custom Furniture

I’ve always been a woodworker, and I’ve always enjoyed designing and building furniture. So I decided to leave the corporate world for three years and went into business making custom, solid-wood furniture. I rented 1100 sq. ft. in an industrial park and hung out my shingle.

For three years I worked with many wonderful people and businesses building furniture for their homes and offices. In three years I built approximately 150 different pieces. They included entertainment centers, hutches, tables, chairs, trade show booths, dining sets, barstools, curio cabinets, porch swings, gun cabinets, dressers, nightstands, and beds. It was another rewarding experience that I will always cherish.

Looking back, I guess that was a time in my life when I just needed to take a break from the fast-paced, deadline-driven, high-pressure corporate world and do something for myself as an artist. For me, there is something special about working one-on-one with nature’s elements and crafting them into functional pieces of art for people’s homes.

I still build furniture today, but only pieces for myself that will be used in my own home. There’s a freedom in building for yourself that can’t be found when you’re building for a client. I don’t need to make a profit, I can experiment with unproven techniques and ideas and not worry that I will fail. I can build what I need and what fits a certain corner of my home and it will never be the wrong size, color, shape, or wood species. It is just what I came up with at that creative point in my life. That can never be wrong.

College Teaching Experience

Reversing gears a little… At the very green, yet ambitious age of 22, I was hired to teach at Viterbo College in La Crosse, WI. I taught four classes including The Design of Advertising, Graphic Design, Illustration, and the capstone class Portfolio. I have always been a teacher at heart. I loved working with my students and seeing them grow and surprise themselves with new talents. There is nothing better for a teacher than seeing a sparkle in a student’s eye when they’ve just done something they thought too difficult.

This amazing experience led to many years of adjunct teaching at Viterbo University and Western Technical College in La Crosse, WI. I liked it so much that it turned out to be something I wanted to do full-time. So, several years later, I joined the full-time staff at Western Technical College’s Graphic Design Department. There, I currently teach Design Fundamentals, Drawing, Illustration Concepts, Photoshop, Graphic Design and Marketing, Comprehensive Graphic Design, and Graphic Design Portfolio.

My students are from all walks of life and I love teaching them all. Some are just out of high school and beginning their college career. Others are middle-aged and have lost their jobs and are looking to be trained in a new field so they can continue to support their families. While still others are retirees that want a new set of marketing and design skills so they can realize their life-long dream of finally starting their own business and being their own boss.

Licensing My Art

To remain relevant I also license my artwork to be used on retail products. My art has been licensed and used to make home and garden products including decorative home banners, windsocks, and garden flags. My work has been sold on products in Walmart, Miles Kimball, and Menards. I also sell products featuring my artwork on zazzle.com. There, people from all around the world order a variety of products and enjoy my art.

Children’s Books

To ensure I continue to remain relevant and inspirational to my graphic design and Illustration students, I write, illustrate, and publish children’s picture books and chapter books. My wife and I have eighteen books and counting. We collaborate well together and enjoy building off of each other’s creativity and talents. My wife, Jeanna, and I currently collaborate on her chapter book series, Darien and the Lost Paints of Telinoria. My wife is the author, and I am illustrating the series. We’ve also collaborated on her wonderfully-written middle-grade book Hope’s Melody.

One of your fondest collaborative achievements is when we, two independent self-published authors, sold our first collaboration (Darien and the Lost Paints of Telinoria) into Barnes and Noble New York for a nationwide in-store release. The B&N buyers bought our book based solely on Jeanna’s first chapter and my single cover illustration.

A Passion for Sharing

I love to share my book writing and illustrating experiences with kids. I’ve collaborated with or local children’s museum to read my books, teach book writing, and how to illustrate during summer camps and programs. I’ve also done several author visits to elementary and middle schools. There, I read my books, discuss my process as a writer and illustrator, show how a book is made, and of course, draw for the kids! It is a rewarding experience that allows me to share what I have learned with a new generation of creative minds. There is something magical about the oohs and ahs of an auditorium full of kids watching you draw a dragon for them on a huge screen.

This magic is second only to teaching my own children to draw, write, and create. It is absolutely amazing and intriguing when my kids share with me something they have thought about, written, drawn, sculpted, built, or created. They see the world in such fresh ways.