Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Introduction
I decided to start this blog about Graphic Design for several reasons;
Educate potential clients about Graphic Design
Serve as a sounding board for/about my profession
A diary concentrating on the creative industry

All About Me
Where do I start? Well, I have been doing illustration since I was a little kid, loved to draw stuff. When I was in High School, I started working for a Sporting Goods company that produced jerseys for local schools sports teams. I learned all about silk screening and eventually how the designs were made. As luck would have it, the Commercial Artist (yes, thats what they were called back then), decided to quit, so they asked me to fill in, since they knew I had an artistic background.

I started going to NOVA that Fall and worked full time during that same period. The owner decided to use a computer to help make the designs for the silk screening, it was a Macintosh IIfx, and it was awesome. 8MB of RAM, no hard disk, just a floppy disk to keep the artwork. I used a program to manipulate text, so I didn't need to draw and redraw things. It saved a ton of time and I got some valuable experience.

I went to Old Dominion University to study Graphic Design and was exposed further to the Macintosh platform, the graphic programs such as Pagemaker, MacDraw and PixelPaint were in their infancy.

My first job was doing graphics support for a government agency, then as a government contractor, getting versed in programs such as Quark, Illustrator, Freehand and Photoshop and learning about how to get stuff printed correctly.

In 1997 I started working for Federal Computer Week, which was a great opportunity. I really got to show my illustration abilities and create a wide variety of work; Spot Illustrations, Info Graphics, Magazine Covers and even wrote a review for a set of new Mac laptops (july 1999).

My next job was for a puzzle and game company, which sound like a ton of fun, but which I discovered, wasn't all fun and games. I was there for about four years and went through five bosses. I did get a chance to do a variety of work, but not a lot of career growth and potential. More about that later.

After that, I went out on my own, for a short time and it was tough. I would have done a dozen things differently if I had to do it over again, but I decided to take a job working for the local government at the Library Administration supporting 20+ branches. I still do freelance work, but have the luxury of choosing my clients and jobs.

In the last year, I haven't concentrated on my freelance business as much because I am a first-time father and spend most of my free time with him. He is much more independent now, so I get time to do small jobs now and then. I decided that a blog is a good tool to educate and entertain those that may want to know more about Hero Dog Design.