KNOCK! KNOCK!

...Who is it? No, it’s not the plumber who's come to fix the sink, it’s John K. West.

(The above references a bit from the 1970's children's television program The Electric Company that ends with a frustrated plumber dropping dead on his customer's doorstep. Apparently, one of my take-aways from 1970's educational TV was that death by stress-induced cardiac arrest is HILARIOUS!)

So anyway, I am a HIGHLY qualified graphic designer and illustrator (see below) in Scottsdale, Arizona. Designers are visual storytellers, and I consider my design work successful when its stories are compelling, concise and relatable. Boring stories are… (I’m searching for the right word)… crap. (Yes! “Crap” nails it!) Few readers have finished the 800 pages of The Story of Salt: A 1,300-Year History because it is NOT compelling, it is NOT concise and its protagonist, salt, is NOT relatable. My mom always told me that life should be enjoyed, not just endured, and the same goes for commercial art: good design is stimulating and enjoyable. My ultimate goal is to make life on Earth a tiny bit better by filling the world with great stories that make people happy. I’m not even kidding.

MY REAL QUALIFICATIONS

Over the course of my (20+ year) career, I have had success as both a freelancer for small businesses and in leadership positions with large national corporations, including AAA and Republic Services. I've been honored for my illustration and design work with the Communicator Crystal Excellence Award and the PRSA Award of Merit, among others. I've had experience with every aspect of commercial art, from creative direction to pre-press, and from large digital display graphics to print publications. Perhaps my most important qualification is that my heart is in my work because I love what I do.

my fake qualifications

My love for commercial art manifested itself early. As a child, I arranged my gum wrapper collection in descending order of wordmark size, and I designed liveries for hundreds of paper airplanes. Unfortunately, my skill in aeronautical engineering was poor, and despite their attractive appearance, these planes could never actually fly more than 8 inches without crash landing. Oh, the humanity! Additionally, I enjoy the distinction of being one of the people to successfully complete all 30 designs in the 1978 Spirograph instruction booklet.

Such extensive early training, combined with my fear of math, prepared me to enroll in many, many, many (also many, many) art and design courses at Arizona State University. With these accumulated experiences under my belt, I launched my career. 

Like I said earlier, I worked in some notable corporate contexts whose huge successes are mostly attributable to the innovative graphics I created for them. In fact, I have practically run everyplace I've worked...into the ground. Not really, just kidding. I got you so good! Lololololol! 

things i adore

In my free time, I adore bar fights and scaring sleeping children (that’s a joke, I hate bar fights). It's not a joke, however, that I adore dogs and share my home with Doug and Betty (who are Boston terrier mixes and therefore very small) and Dave (who is a Siberian husky and therefore much larger). Dave had a popular Instagram account, but he got bored with it and hasn’t updated it for a long time. It’s a delicate subject when I point out that he’s damaging his brand equity. He barks at me when I bring it up, so I just let sleeping dogs lie (see what I did there?). He’s pictured with me above. What a handsome fellow! And Dave is cute too.

I adore France. I adore French people. If you don't… hey, what do you think about this weather we’re having? Along with my undergrad degree in art, I've also got both undergrad and graduate degrees in French language and literature. I speak pretty fluently (both French and English) and was lucky enough to work in France for a while. I also spent some time teaching French as an adjunct faculty member at ASU. I adore traveling internationally as often as I can, but not to places that smell bad, places where they eat gross stuff like scorpions or places where a lot of trains derail (a/k/a places Anthony Bourdain would have visited. Bummer that he left us).

In addition to dogs and France, I adore the Swedish supergroup ABBA. I know their birthdays, middle names and hometowns—seriously. Agnetha Åse Fältskog, born April 5, 1950, is from Jönköping (see? I wasn’t lying). I adore nonfat milk, Mamrie Hart, YouTube, Eurovision, most books (except for The Story of Salt: A 1,300-Year History) and the color yellow, especially Pantone 101 uncoated.*

*In the 90's, I adored the Spice Girls, but that's not the kind of information I like to broadcast in case I someday want to get a nomination to the Supreme Court or something. So let’s keep it between us.