Born too late for the space age, too poor for space tourism, and too early to explore the galaxy, I’ve turned my obsession with sci-fi pop culture into a design career.  A steady diet of bad films and cheesy sci-fi left me feeling like the world lacked something.  It lacked pageantry and fun.  We all share pop culture, and it gives us a sense of a world that’s more fun than the one we live in now.  The movies, toys, and games of my youth helped shape my sense of what the world could be, a world that could be something more.  That sense of wanting to make the world more than just the day to day is what made me go back to school at 37 and pursue an art degree.

Too often design is merely functional;  despite being intended to tell a brand's story those stories can be flat.  Instead I like to use bright colors, simplified forms, and nods to other works to make even an annual report into something of an experience.  Even a logo can become a character in and of itself, turning a brand into a story.  I also use images and tropes of sci-fi and fantasy to bring a sense of fun to life.  There's something rewarding about creating an ad that makes the world seem more adventurous and full of possibility.

This is what my show, Life's Not Fare, is about.  I wanted to show off my layout skills and packaging design skills, as well as my logo designs, but in a realm that allowed me to build that sense of fun, too.  The astronaut is something that I've always sort of identified with, exploring spaces that are strange while also isolated from his environment.  The astronaut with his taxi image was a recurring piece from my past works, and so I decided to build a toy line about that sense of fun that I wish reality had.  A bit of adventure, a bit of silliness, and a world and show defined by logos and icons, similar to our own daily life.  It's a show about exploration into new spaces, a work a bit about myself, and a way to show that design can be fun.

The comic and animation work of Vaughn Bodē and Ralph Bakshi are a heavy influence on my work, especially their off-beat questioning of society, and the wild colors and cartoonishness of Frank Koziks's poster work was what first made me even consider becoming a graphic designer.  Discovering Lester Beall's use of vivid color and mastery of using and breaking the grid was a pivotal moment in my development as well, and countered my fascination with Romek Marber's near-scientific cover designs.  Mieke Gerritzen’s typography has also been a big influence and helped me rethink my use of typography and how to make it stand on its own.  My show's work was also very much in the footsteps of Larry Hama and Ron Rudat's work in toy package design and illustration;  their world building on GI Joe is one of the biggest reasons my show even came to be.