Some years ago I started learning HTML in a middle school class taught by an eccentric, red-haired art teacher. I befriended a kid that taught me how to code a table and an image rollover. It was love at first site. With design... not with him.
Some time after that, I entered college (Pacific Northwest College of Art) and focused on studying design. However, I found myself disillusioned with the superficiality of the students (and faculty) who were simply too interested in things that look "cool," and not interested enough in solutions that were conceptually sound.
So I joined with a creative director that was starting a new business, and I switched my studies from Design to a major called Intermedia. Intermedia was a fine art major that was incredibly conceptually heavy and focused specifically on interdisciplinary artists. By day, I was honing my critical thinking, conceptual approaches, and woodworking skills. While by night, I was pushing pixels, pleasing clients, and occasionally getting to relax with a nice drink.
Four years later, that little two person design firm grew into a full fledged branding agency, consisting of myself and six other very talented individuals. I finished school, already with over four years of professional design-related experience under my belt. I had also carved out a very nice niche in the Portland art scene by relentlessly exhibiting artwork and by starting a business/website called OPENWIDEpdx.com, which had developed quite a devoted (and large) fan-base. I developed a genuine love for organizing, directing and synthesizing difficult concepts into simple, functional works of art. Everything was going absolutely perfect...
...But then the wonderful 2009 recession began. Where's your bailout when you need it? Money dried up as companies cut their advertising budgets, even though its a time when they really could have used the publicity. That lead the little design firm that could, to somewhat crash as well.
Now I am looking for a new place to call home. Preferably a place where people not only believe in the beauty of design, but also in the beauty of critical thinking, courageous ideas, and design as an anthropological study. Oh, and a teapot or coffee maker would be great too.
