I phased out of that community, but the desire for design and marketing remained. So I built a website to showcase my work. Shortly thereafter, I was hired as an ad designer for a local newspaper, The Missoula Independent. Several of my ads were run as full and partial page ads in The Missoulian, and I hold the honor of having designed the very last of the Rockin’ Rudy’s Independent back covers, one as an unwitting collab with the beloved Missoula artist, Parker Beckley.

My higher education was in Global Humanities and Religions. Humanities (the study of the “Great Books”) and religions aim toward the core of who we are - what we ultimately desire and what drives us. They also include tremendously powerful and remarkably simple symbology. In design and marketing, desire and symbology are two of the most fundamental building blocks.

Education - and time in the dark and light corners - has equipped me to see culture more wholly, to analyze what speaks today, and to build powerful, simple symbols and structures and brands that tell stories.