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Background
I graduated with a BFA in Illustration from Northern Illinois University in 1995 with the intention of being a comic book artist. At the time of my graduation, the comic book industry took a nose dive. So, I looked into doing other things, eventually getting work as a graphic artist. My first job using a computer for design was at a t-shirt printing place. Once I picked up the basics (Adobe, Quark, etc.) I moved to the city and started freelancing. I also began to dabble in building web content, but didn’t get fully into web development until around 2006. I mainly worked as a Flash/ActionScript Developer. When Steve Jobs announced that Flash would never be on iOS, I saw the writing on the wall and changed my focus. I created a couple cross-platform mobile apps with the Corona SDK, but mainly concentrated on the modern front end stack (especially JavaScript). Lately, I’ve also been doing a little back end dev (PHP/MySQL and more recently node.js). I currently work at a big ad agency in downtown Chicago just off the Mag Mile.
I enjoy the hell out of doing this stuff, and my family life is pretty awesome too (I have a wife and two boys). Life is pretty damn good.