Principled practice designer and photographer
who enjoys radical collaboration and
routinely makes ideas that matter happen.
Design without style, at worst, is functional. Style without design, at best, is dysfunctional.
Designing.
Professional creative director, mentor, and experience designer. A hands-on strategist with keen planning, research, and implementation of user-centric design principles. Creating brands, making digital products, and architecting atomic design systems to craft intuitive user experiences. Enthusiastically curious and often finding improvement and innovation in any challenge. A creative catalyst who enjoys sharing and learning to help others. Continuously gathering industries’ insights and engineering efficient design processes in communication services, consumer discretionary goods and services, education, healthcare, and information technology sectors.
Design, in the broader sense, has been an integral part of my work. Whether it be interactive systems, UXD, IxD, UI, product design, illustration, layout, typography, or content, I play a role in each and routinely consider how every element fits together to ensure every project leads to a fantastic experience. My focus is on full design systems emphasizing human-centered and user-centered design, which has led me to talk and speaking presentations in user experience design (UX) and design thinking.
Collaborating and Mentoring.
In 2006, my New Media Director role for a publishing and creative agency led me to create a collaborative and fun environment for designers, developers, writers, and other creatives. Later, in 2012, as Creative Director and founder of IDeaspace at North Dakota State University, we enabled a design lab that connected students, faculty, and staff with K-12 students and the community through technology and design.
I enjoy working, collaborating, teaching, and learning from people from across all disciplines, young and old. It has been rewarding and empowering to lead and be a creative catalyst to designers, writers, videographers, photographers, editors, software developers, engineers, c-type executives, and a wide gamut of industry and education professionals.
Capturing snapshots.
It was a frustrating mishap when I was 15 years-old during a long trip that led me to appreciate photography and gave me the desire to be a good photographer. I continue to learn from failure, adjusting light, directing the subject, setting the scene, and understanding the various techniques and tools to make an image attractive, seductive, and even controversial. I had an academic and formative experience in photography during my college. I’ve grown and collaborated with professional photographers, stylists, makeup artists, models, and other creatives to capture images used for commercial, editorial, fashion, or portrait purposes. I know the importance of Mise-en-scène. The value of learning to manipulate light and conveying a story. Photography helps me appreciate my surroundings, pay attention to details, and bring that visual knowledge with me to anything else that I do.