Put aside ideas of “real Americans” and “pro-American” parts of the country and the divisive rhetoric from both political parties. Look around you. Take in what you see, and realize that we can’t become a better city, state, or nation without each other — in spite of our differences.
This is the change we need.
(Thanks to [...]

When I was in the first grade, I was a Brownie. I remember two things clearly about that time: Brownie Camp and selling Girl Scout cookies. My grandparents were in town during cookie season that year and purchased an entire suitcase full of cookies! Cut to 25 years later when OakTree Digital asked me to [...]

When I decided I wanted to be a designer, I was going out on a limb. The year was 1997, and I’d just completed my bachelor’s degree in English, had no design experience, and had only created one (very hideous) web site. Back then, Amazon.com was still in its infancy and I wasn’t even sure [...]

Portland is a small small town in some ways. Working in the interactive industry only seems to exaggerate the smallness, since everyone has worked with everyone somewhere along the line. If I had a nickel for every time I met a prospective client who turned out to be best friends with a friend, friends with [...]

Sometimes, I learn about teamwork and collaboration in the least likely places. In the two years that I’ve been a volunteer dog walker at the Oregon Humane Society, I’ve walked with four different teams and had varying experiences on each.
The dog walking schedule is broken down into morning and evening “teams” that work on getting [...]

When was the last time you said that to someone? Remember making mix tapes in high school, maybe even in college? Break up tapes, I have a crush on you tapes, a tape of Alphaville’s “Forever Young” repeated over and over… Then you used the photocopier to make fancy covers for you tapes, gave them [...]

New, new, new!
I moved out of my small Activspace office a few months ago to take a job with a local interactive agency, but that affair only lasted six months. Now I’m in a great new office space with two other designers, where we’re starting a design collective geared toward providing design solutions ranging from [...]

I always wanted to be a teacher. Ok, not always, since I already wrote about wanting to be a ninja. But starting in high school and going in to college, the plan was to be an English teacher. Since turning into a designer, I’ve either wanted to go to graduate school or teach. I only [...]