There are destination people and journey people—I am the latter.

That instinct carries through everything I do — the way I travel, the way I photograph, and the way I approach creative work.

I’ve been a designer and creative director since before I knew those words existed. I’ve always loved making things — drawing, building, rearranging, photographing, organizing — and I’m instinctively drawn to others who create. Makers recognize makers.

I like the long way around. Small towns. Blue highways. Hand-painted signs fading into brick. Artist-built environments that feel slightly improbable and completely personal.

Whenever I can, I try to visit while the artist is still there — to hear the story directly, to understand the decisions, to see the place through their eyes. Sometimes I return years later, just to see how the work is holding up. What changes. What endures. What yields to time.

That evolution is part of the story.

Spending time on backroads has shaped how I see design. When you wander long enough, you start to notice the shifts — in landscapes, in ways of life — often written directly into the vernacular typography. Ghost signs fading into brick. Hand-lettered menus taped inside windows. Improvised type built from necessity rather than theory. None of it is precious. All of it is honest. Even the roughest lettering carries structure underneath — rhythm, proportion, logic. Someone made decisions. Someone cared.

The same is true of artist-built environments. At first glance they can feel chaotic or improbable. Stay awhile and you begin to see the internal system holding everything together — persistence, intuition, a kind of quiet engineering.

That lens comes with me into creative work. I’m interested in what holds up. What feels intentional. What can evolve without losing itself. I work alongside teams as a creative partner — sometimes leading, sometimes making — helping ideas find their structure and their voice.

I document these places carefully and share the work with preservation archives so the story lasts longer than the materials sometimes do — and so researchers and restoration teams can see how environments change over time.

Self-taught artists are often dismissed too quickly. I’m drawn to the ones who build simply because they need to. There’s something deeply human about that.

I teach because I love being around people who are still figuring things out. Students don’t let you hide behind jargon. They ask better questions. Being named an AIGA Fellow in 2024 meant something because it felt like recognition from a community that values craft, curiosity, and care.

I will always love a good stretch of blue highway.