Where are you now? Where is home?
I was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. Raleigh was high school, getting married, and starting college. Then my wife and I moved to Savannah, Georgia for over eight years where we started a family and had two kids in Savannah. From Savannah, we moved to Alameda, California to work in San Francisco for a few years and added another kid. But now we are firmly settled in Richmond, Virginia — with a fourth kid. All boys. We’re in Richmond for the foreseeable future.
Census is a distributed company so I work from home in a fairly spacious office.
Why/how did you become a designer?
I grew up loving to draw. As an only child, filling up paper with drawings of dragons and wizards was my primary pass time. My uncle is a professional illustrator so the possibility that I could draw for money was always real. I won an art contest in 2nd grade and thought my career would be defined by it. (I’ve since lost the blue ribbon.)
I used to love comics and cartoons as well. How I see the world is in part owed to Cartoon Network and all the syndication there. The lens those animators and producers gave to me is still visible to my perception.
I was also studying George Bridgman’s anatomy styles. I would pour over Alex Ross, Frank Frazetta, and Paul Romano. I thought I might make album art or band merch or maybe posters for a living.
But it wasn’t until I graduated high school and attended an entry-level technical college that I really discovered design (as a more commercial alternative to the finer arts that I was familiar and comfortable with). I eventually transferred to SCAD (the Savannah College of Art and Design), where I graduated.
The rest is history: I worked and freelanced while in school and eventually hit a point where I truly considered myself a real “designer.”
Design influences
I took at least five art history classes while attending the Savannah College of Art and Design. I absolutely loved it. I had a general sense of art movements and a timeline of history but taking the classes opened my eyes to a love of art and design in a different context. Tying this back to the question: I love art and design history as an influence to new projects. New problems can often use old tactics.
But I also like to read and think design influences don’t have to be design references. Plenty of books I’ve read have helped shape how I see the world and how I see design as a medium. The same is true of music, and nature, and food, and anything else that can even abstractly inform design.
What are you listening to now? What do you like to listen to while you work?
I listen to a lot of podcasts. Radiolab, This American Life, and 99% Invisible (of course). I’m also on a music-specific binge of Bandsplain, 60 Songs that Explain the 90s, and Switched on Pop. But if it’s not podcast its gonna be a mix of metal, jazz, and indie.
Growing up in Raleigh in the late 90s and early aughts opened me up to some fantastic local music (Between the Buried and Me, The Scaries, Allie with an I, Bowerbirds, Max Indian, Hopesfall, The Love Language, Megafaun, the Mountain Goats, Beloved, et al).
Jazz is always going to be Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, George Benson, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and John Coltrane.
As for metal: Muldrotha, Gaerea, Nostromo, Blackbraid — and more, of course but I won’t spam for dorky metal unless anyone asks.
Why you joined Census?
Actually our head of marketing reached out about an open role. I joined very early and played the part of “dumbest in the room” while our engineers were talking about technical new features and all sorts of things that were flying over my head.
But I did fall in love with the idea of data as an emerging field in tech. Census is poised to be a pivotal piece of the marketing and data stack.
And also the people. The folks that work at Census are all incredibly skilled and incredibly kind. Whenever our customers reference Census as technology they also call out our team as a key ingredient to our success. I love that and think it speaks volumes to our potential.
I’m still the dumbest in the room and love the learning environment where I can be a great designer while still absorbing new things everyday.
Upcoming trends that are exciting to you?
I don’t like this question. Can I skip this question? I don’t want to see skeuomorphism come back because I never could make my screen look like a tactile and real-world object.
