Biography
All the non-fiction about Fictionalhead
Press On, You Crazy Diamond
For those of you curious about my wonderful back story as to how I got interested in design and computers, I’ll spare you the “I was always creative as a kid” speech, and give you the less sensationalized version. Here’s a hint, it involves the game ‘DOOM’. Kind of strange such a terrible game would end up inspiring such things if you ask me.
As The Story Goes…
Born and raised in the grand city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, I spent a lot of my childhood honing my crazy crayon skills, building impenetrable fortresses in the forsythia bushes outside, and just playing with my friends. Fast forward to 1993, when I remember being over at one of my friends houses, and he wanted to show me a new computer and game he just got. This event was actually the first real experience I had with computers, as my family had always used a “word processor” to type all of our documents for school. For those of you who are not sure what a word processor is, it’s just a typewriter that displays its contents on a monochrome screen before actually committing the type to a printed page. Anyway, on with the story.
We went downstairs to play the game (which ended up being DOOM , but I digress), and we played for a while until we got stuck. Like all kids stuck in a game, we decided to cheat for more health, and that’s where my fascination with computers really began. In the game, in order to cheat, you had to bring up the console where you could type your own commands, and the game would execute them. The simple idea behind that blew my mind. The idea that through using computers, someone could manipulate anything seemed like a place for infinite exploration. You could make the monsters weaker, your character faster, you could do just about anything. Well, anything as far as 1993 computer games go.
That Night, A Forest Grew
So after years of school, and countless assignments marked with doodles, my already piqued interest in art then evolved towards art within the realm of the digital and everything that came with it. So naturally, when it came time to choose a college, my choice needed to satisfy two conditions: be artistic, and be technology related. The path I chose was that of Graphic Design at Kendall College Of Art and Design. All through college I spent hours learning the various programs of the trade, and if out of nothing more than pure curiosity, did my best to master everything I could about them. I still maintain this fervor for software knowledge because I think that if the user knows how to manipulate their computer, they can make just about anything they can possibly think of; and that is true creative freedom.
Let’s Give The Boy A Hand
Four years of college and thousands of program commands later, I graduated from Kendall as Valedictorian with a Studio Excellence Award for Graphic Design. I am now proud to say that I am proficient (but still a curious cat) in pretty much every program of the trade, and still treat my brain like a sponge for soaking up any information I don’t have.