“Who, choosing among the giants of the industry here, would you say are designers you admire and whose style you strive to emulate?”  

I’m interviewing for a design position at a glossy monthly and this is the question posed to me just before I flip open my portfolio for the publisher across the table. I’d never been asked anything of the sort in an interview before and, while it caught me mostly off guard, I had only to think about it for a second before answering:

"Er, none of them.” Ha! Swish.

It’s simple, really: I live in Chicago. I create badass stuff with my little computer. And I’m not an insufferable douchebag.

Since receiving my degree in Graphic Design in 1998, I’ve worked for several newspapers, alt-weeklies, and magazines in Omaha, NE, and Chicago.

In 2003, after two years at Omaha’s largest and oldest alternative newsweekly, the Omaha Reader, where I advanced from part-time ad monkey to bigshot Production Manager, I moved on to head the art department of Omaha Pulp, a fun, naughty little rag that sought to fill the art and culture void left in Omaha media with the Reader’s shift toward more news coverage. (How fun was Pulp? Well, I got to dispense questionable advice Dear Abbey-style in the guise of a real tiny baby who lived in a walnut shell. How naughty? Bitch was filthy.)

Regrettably, Pulp was not long for this world and after its demise I ducked out of the unforch nine-to-five and focused my attention on freelancing, working often with Miller Marketing, a firm that served a variety of clients and I designed everything from billboards to business cards, magazine campaigns to television graphics. Cha-ching!

2004 saw my pretty art go national, as I contributed an illustration to the fall line of fashion designer Angel Quintana’s Sunday Driver label. As payment for my work, gushed over as it was, I was promised a single garment bearing the sweet little turtledoves I’d drawn, and I’m still waiting for that damn shirt to arrive.

In the fall of 2005, in need of a change and o-v-e-r Omaha, I headed east to test my fortunes in Chicago. I scored a gig the following summer designing for Windy City Sports magazine and its network of five sister pubs, and in my time there, I have been instrumental in making the magazines look, according to Editorial Director Jeff Banowetz, “better than they ever have before.”  

In addition to my stellar print design skills, I’m also no slouch as a web designer, having created websites for authors Timothy Schaffert, Maud Casey, Amy Guth (TK), and the online home of Schaffert’s (downtown) Omaha Lit Fest.  

Far too modest to boast of my own design brilliance, I instead prefer to let others crow about my skillz:  

"His head is filled with gorgeous ideas.”
— Amy Guth, Author

"You are a digital Picasso.”
— Daniel Lee, Windy City Sports Account Executive

Click thumbnails to view portfolio in new window.