“You can be cautious or you can be creative, but there’s no such thing as a Cautious Creative.” - George Lois
YOU’RE NOSY!
(Luckily curiosity won’t kill the cat in this instance)
Here are some fun facts about me relevant to this portfolio
THE KID VIEW
When I was 11 years old I started a newspaper called “The Kid View” (with me being the kid obviously). I designed the newspaper in Microsoft Word and eventually graduated to Microsoft Publisher (which is actually being sunsetted). At the time, I had no idea I was engaging in news design. I would go to my parents jobs to print the paper off and sold a copies for $1 each. At a certain point, I saved enough money to buy my own phone! The victory was short-lived because I eventually lost the phone.
CLUB COMIC’S INC.
In elementary school I started a comic book business called “Club Comics Inc.” I was inspired by the Captain Underpants series, which was also based on the main characters writing their own comics within the book.
My main comic was called Afro Thunder! It was named after the character from the boxing game Ready 2 Rumble. Afro Thunder had electric powers similar to Static Shock. He was also lightly inspired by the main character in the movie Undercover Brother, which in retrospect may not have been an age appropriate movie for me to watch at 7 years old but thats not the point here! Afro Thunder was a soul inspired hero that threw picks from his hair and had a side kick called “Baby Fro.”
Afro Thunder’s main antagonist was the evil scientist Barber H. Shop. I think this was also inspired by the fact that my parents didn’t let me grow my hair past a certain point when I was a kid lol.
But I would draw out the comics, write the dialogues and create layouts. Again I didn’t even realize I was tapping into a design prowess that I had yet to understand.
The Super Brothers was the second and final comic I made as a kid under the “Club Comics Inc.” banner. This series was about two mischievous brothers, who were essentially geniuses. School was so unchallenging for them that they spent most of their days getting in trouble from the experiments that they tried to conduct during school hours. Most things landed them in detention.
MY FIRST BIG BREAK
The first “magazine” I ever designed was for my media design course in my junior year of college. We were tasked with creating a few pages of a sample magazine. As a Kobe and sneaker fan, I thought making a fake sneaker mag would be an easy lift, especially since he was about to play his last game around the time of this assignment, which was April of 2016. This class ended up introducing me into the world of design, espesically Adobe Indesign, and even after the course ended, I would create mockups of made up magazines just for practice.
Looking back I feel like this Is so subpar but my classmates gave me high praise and my instructor gave me like a B+ If I remember correctly.
Eventually in my senior year of college I went to my schools newspaper The Daily Athenaeum to try and become a sports reporter. One of my classmates was on staff and told me I was super talented in design and should apply to be layout editor because I could do the job and would actually get paid. Let’s just say, the rest is history.