why 804?

804 was my apartment number when I lived in a downtown high-rise back in the 90's and where I got my first taste of using Photoshop.

I was working at an industrial baking company at the time and hated it. I made a good amount of money being a union baker but still, I thought that there has GOT to be more to life than working terrible hours in a very loud, very hot factory with people who didn't care about doing a good job...just phone it in and collect a paycheck. I was a guitarist at the time as well, so after getting off stage everyone else got to have fun while I went straight to work. The more I tinkered with PS and learned about photo manipulation, I thought...I should just read and learn more about this whole "graphic design" thing... maybe I could do something with that.

Within a couple of years a guy who was a fan of the band I was in at the time offered me a job doing deliveries at his printing company. From there he moved me into the bindery department learning how to run die-cutters, collators, folders, and saddle stitchers (invaluable experience for a budding graphic designer). About a year after that I took over his two person prepress department with just me running everything. I was hooked...and hungry to learn everything.

print design

Well, let me tell you a little bit about what I've learned after 2 plus decades in Marketing and the Printing industry.
A degree does not seem to teach you much about how to actually get things produced. I've seen some incredible work from many college graduates that is just not printable the way they envision it.

They do not seem to teach the importance of things like bleed, when to use spot colors, rich black, over-printing black, dot gain of a particular stock, adjusting for "creep" on saddle-stitched books, the vagaries of the printing process that will be used (screen print, 4-color offset, large format digital, silver etch, etc, etc). These things are learned on the "mean streets" of file prep. Yes, a prepress professional is supposed to fix things of this nature but, we are not "miracle workers". If it takes longer than 10 minutes....then someone's getting charged. Time is money...you know it, I know it.

I have worked in prepress departments in screen print, digital, and offset printing companies and know what you can and (more importantly) CANNOT do. If a prepress professional has to touch the files at all, then the quote you received is going to go up a bit by $60 - $120 an hour. I've found that fixing files takes way more time than just creating them correctly from the start.

web design and development

In my years of playing in bands, things need to be created like flyers, posters, and a website which I took upon myself to learn how that gets accomplished.

I started working with Microsoft FrontPage to create websites and from there I got into Adobe DreamWeaver before finally realizing that to really make things happen, you have to learn how to write code.

I got a job as a Marketing Specialist at a company that makes UTVs and Fun Karts. My boss asked me to get with the website provider to change a couple of images and some text. They responded that they estimated it would "take 3-4 hours to complete"....really? It's a 15 minute job at best. I told him that they were hosing us and I threw together some ideas for an updated website that I could do and my boss told me to go ahead and create a new website for them, which I did. He asked if I could create an online store to sell parts and accessories, to which I replied "Of course" (not knowing how to do it at the time but it's never stopped me before). A sizable pain in the ass but it got accomplished.

When he retired, his replacement challenged me with creating an online dealer login portal system to help the dealers connect with the company and vice versa. That's when I fell in love with writing PHP code to interact with MySQL databases. I no longer work at that company but I still take care of that portal for them which has grown into a very large system, handling all of their warranty claims, dealer parts ordering, tracking all dealer interactions, sales maps, potential new dealer maps, providing dealers with access to high quality marketing materials, and so much more

Internally, customer service can use it to add / remove businesses to and from a customer facing dealer locator map showing whether they are a dealer, service center or both with just one mouse click. Externally, sales reps can pull into a dealer location and bring up all pertinent information regarding who they're about to visit via their phone (the owners dog's name, their favorite NFL team, whatever else they put into the notes). There are also large screen TVs throughout the plant that cycle though info screens which the floor managers can change the content of (vehicles built, attendance, quality issues, etc.) via the portal. There are too many things that can be done with that system to list here.

the upshot

If you've read this far, the upshot of it all is...I did not go to college. I learned from doing. I've worked hard and made mistakes and learned from every single one of them... never to be made again.

I have no interest in owning / running a design company full time, hiring employees, managing people, etc. I am free-lance only. I currently have a job doing work for corporations in the medical and defense industries. In my spare time, I would love to be able to help you get any project done.

Contact me and I'll let you know if I have the appropriate amount of time to dedicate to you and your project. Some projects seem small but take a lot of time and some are large but fairly easy.

It's extremely important for me to make sure I have enough time to fully take care of all people who have tasked me with their design needs...which means you, potential client.

B.