The practice of graffiti provided me with creative ways to mix and match made up texts and figurines with colors to reach a stylistic final design. Graffiti gave me a huge advantage when I reached art school at Rutgers, and until this day it is almost second nature for me to combine colors in different arrangements to make them work communicatively, both on an emotional and intellectual level.

I never liked the idea of graphic design, and in art school graphic designers were seen by hard core art majors as cop outs, which only served to further turn me off to the medium. However, we live in a different era, graphic design has evolved to an art form. It wasn’t until I started to work with Giles Dunn that I came to appreciate the creative quality of graphic design and its impact as a visual communicator.

Giles was considered one of the most important graphic designers in New York City during the years 2000-2001, as well as being renowned worldwide for his work in the field. Working with Giles at Punkt opened my eyes to the pivotal structures of good design and the brainstorming techniques necessary to obtain them. We’d get together, wait for the studio to clear, put on Underworld, open some beers and began to discuss tangents of possibilities. We applied old ideas and created new ones.

There were other great designers that shared the studio space on Gansevoort Street during that time. Anne Marie Gillian and Trisha Krauss were also influential, both having distinguished work of their own that added to my new found respect for the medium. It was a great time for learning and finding identity with someone who was well established and in whom one saw so many similarities. It gave me the confidence to believe in my own aesthetic intuitions and choices.