Scene 1: A creative start
Hello, my name is Andrew White, and I am a creative professional living in the DFW area. As far as I can remember, I have been filtering life through the creative lens of my unique imagination. Back when I was a wee little lad in the 80s, I began my stroll down the creative path via creative writing. While other little boys were out playing football or riding bikes, I was funneling my creative imagination through a Bic pen. Although the stories I crafted were testosterone drenched odes to my favorite action TV shows and movies, I unwittingly learned how to express myself quite well via words.
Scene 2: Andrew the technical writer: (yeah,right)
This early aptitude for written communication served me well during my formative years in college, and resulted in a Bachelors degree in English from the University of Texas at Arlington. When I signed on as a Copywriter for RadioShack advertising shortly after graduation, graphic design was the furthest thing from my mind at the time. In fact, I had no clue what graphic design was and had no inkling about what a graphic designer did. I was going to become a technical writer. Don't ask how a creative person like myself got strapped into the creative straitjacket of technical writing, but that's exactly what happened.
Luckily for me though, Radioshack advertising exposed me to graphic designers and eventually God's gift to man, Adobe Photoshop. Shortly after a designer friend of mine taught me the basics of this awesome tool, I found myself in a class at the University of North Texas titled Online Documentation. It was in this class that I learned about God's other gift to man, Dreamweaver. Once my first website project was complete, a spark became a flame and the design bug sunk it's fangs deep into my soul. Forget technical writing! I wanted to be Web Designer!
Scene 3: Web-mania & Contemplation
After obtaining an "A" in my Online Documentation class, I trashed my tech writing plans and began working toward a certificate in web development at Tarrant County College. In addition to classes, I managed to increase my web prowess via freelance work and volunteering to build an intranet site for the copywriter team at RadioShack. Additional knowledge was acquired by hob nobbing with the web designers on the Radioshack.com team and befriending a new web programmer who had recently joined the RadioShack advertising family. I was totally on my way toward becoming a webslinger with some formidable skills. But then it happened. The dot com bubble burst and spewed a truckload of garbage all over my future in web design.
All those web design jobs I had been lusting after disappeared pretty quickly, and I soon found myself wallowing in a cesspool of defeat and confusion.
"What the heck do I do now? What direction do I go?" I asked myself.
After the initial shockwaves died away, yours truly pondered the aforementioned question for a few years. In the midst of slaughtering alien beings via my Xbox 360, my mind would temporarily refocus on reality. Although graphic design wasn't totally off my radar screen, I really was not interested in it at the time. After spending so much time and energy eating, drinking, and dreaming everything web, the thought of print work looked absolutely boring to me. Compared to the razzle dazzle world of the web, print looked like a dead zone where my creative energy would be sucked into a vortex of unrelenting boredom.
Scene 4: Creative Renewal & Artistic approach
As far as graphic design goes, I pretty much straddled the fence until the summer of 2006. For the past five years, I had pretty much been writing copy for RadioShack during the day, and unleashing my creative energy at night and on weekends via freelance web, motion graphics and DVD projects. However, after a slew of layoffs at Radioshack corporate and the encouragement of the designer friend who taught me Photoshop, I finally jumped off my fence and plunged head first into the world of graphic design. By this time, it became more common for graphic designers to wear web design and motion graphics hats, so my desire to work with different mediums was no longer a roadblock. Full speed ahead!
Today I am back in school for "official" graphic designer training and am looking forward to a rewarding career as a creative professional. Although I did not realize it till recently, my meandering career path has transformed me into an individual with a broad skill set and unique worldview. My forays into creative writing, copywriting, web development, motion graphics, and video editing fit nicely under the graphic design umbrella. So it all worked out in the end.
The work you see on this portfolio site is the result of a steady diet of rock music, pop-culture, and a unique approach to visual problem-solving that was foraged from my unusual background. Bold colors, arresting imagery, carefully chosen references, and out of the box solutions are the order of the day. I tap my foot to the beat of a heavy metal drummer, and I have finally decided to embrace this fact rather than hide it. I believe the design and presentation style of the artwork on the site makes this philosophy quite clear.
I have heard many designers say throughout the years that one must be true to oneself.
I can only hope that you (Mr. or Mrs. Employer) are not too frightened by what you see!
Sincerely,
Andrew White