Hello! Thank you for your interest in me and my work, and for this opportunity to introduce myself to you!

• For a more straight forward explanation of what I can do for your project, checkout my services page here, or my resume here. You can use the form here to contact me, or skip to the chase and use this form to directly request a quote.

My name is Robert, I design things.

As a young boy I wanted to be a scientist. As I got older I realized that what I really want to do is become an inventor. My professional life started early and opportunity and rare knowledge led to working as a full scale network consultant by the end of high school. In the mid 90s, anyone with computer knowledge was likely to be called on to help with page layouts and what was then called ‘desktop publishing’ by most people. This led directly to an interest in creating designed  business collateral. By the time I was 19 and had moved to Chicago, years of doing this sort of incidental design work and playing keyboards in a ‘techno band’ led to the opportunity to design concert fliers for some notable musicians such as Vanilla Ice, Ice T, Paul Johnson, and many other Chicago house music luminaries. This taste of ‘real graphic design culture’ led to me enrolling for a BFA in Graphic Design at the large expensive private art and design school ‘Columbia College Chicago’.

After a year of studying topics such as typography, color theory, drawing, and digital illustration, I discovered the field of ‘industrial design’. A bit of a revelation, I realized suddenly that this was actually the field of ‘formalized invention’. I immediately switched majors to the product design program which was on the floor below graphic design at Columbia. I took to ID and eventually worked for 2 different companies owned by impressed professors or class visitors, Inventables and Lund Toys. At this time I also was involved in the ‘craft-centric’ poster design company ‘Vacuum Press’ which I started with Robert Brenner and Monique Duran. Vacuum Press used a wild mix of computerized source material and processes like vacuum forming, resin casting, hand paper making, and silkscreen printing to create work for record labels such as K Records in Olympia Washington, Thrill Jockey Records in Chicago, and the Ghost Arcade video game music label that was ahead of the curve in 2001. Some of the bands we worked with included a 3D typographic poster for Calvin Johnson’s ‘Dub Narcotic’, creating silkscreen printed ‘Golden Tickets’ for legendary band ‘Eleventh Dream Day’, and the beloved ‘The Microphones’.

While taking a class concerning ‘information design’ as an elective design class, I was introduced formally the field of design responsible primarily for way-finding signage and obsessed with the transmission of information. Edward Tufte became a major influence, but an even bigger outcome of taking this course was the opportunity enter a call for grant applications which resulted in an European Union grant from the International Institute of Information Design (IIID) to study information design with notable Swedish author, professor and information design theorist ‘Rune Peterson‘. Living in Sweden and attending classes in an international setting was extremely rewarding on every level. The program’s culmination, a 4 week project with the NGO, ‘Friends of Cabo Verde’  in Bolzano, Italy was also a great opportunity to be involved in a large scale professional project. As luck had it, everyone in my group deferred to myself at the time of our final presentation in front of Italian television cameras.

Returning to Chicago, I threw myself into technical and creative art and design projects. I designed and built several 3D carving machines known as ‘CNC’ devices. I began rapidly expanding my ever present freelance design work to include products and technical things. I also began a string of jobs in research, development and architecture with companies such as Weber Stephens,who make high quality grills, Transco Products designing insulation systems for nuclear power plants, and the world famous architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, Merrill where I had the ‘temporary dream job’ of Model Maker. Having been laid off at the height of our current financial disaster, I am now available for freelance projects.

Thank you for your interest!

Robert