HELLOI love design. Design of all kinds: from furniture, posters, signage, buildings, to matchbooks. It's always fun and surprising to find good design in the smallest of things or in the most unlikely places.
I started making signs when I was 11 years old, for my backyard carnival. Very influenced from visits to Marriot's Great America theme park in Santa Clara, California and their themed sections,  I remember it being important that my signs must reflect the "area" it was in. The big roulette wheel made with my bike was in Old Town, therefore I had to draw it to make it look old and Western.  Yes, even by 11 I was already making things harder than they needed to be.
I officially started studying Graphic Design in 1989 at San Francisco State University. I was then convinced to transfer to a school that specialized in this field, so I went to the California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA). It was here that I felt I became an artist. I studied under renowned design professionals like Lucille Tenazas, Michael Manwaring, Michael Vanderbyl, Bob Aufuldish, and Leslie Becker - and under them I learned how to approach graphic design with a fine art sensibility.
The main theory I learned, was that above all else, when designing anyway, it is about the concept. What do I want to say? What image would be the most powerful for that concept? The color palette. The font. There needs to be a reason for every choice. I have told students in the Exhibition department of the Fashion Institute of Technology, that Concept is still King. It's the framework that will help define their design ideas.  And it's this belief that helped me when transitioning into html-based websites, to Flash animations, to interactive work and then into motion graphics. No matter the software, without a good concept, it has no real depth.
“I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That’s my intent.”    -Saul Bass