I’m a husband/father/designer with a hunger for learning new things and solving difficult problems. I’ve worked in both physical and digital/electronic design, going from designing highly custom furniture professionally to designing LED lighting and control systems, including software development for networked lighting controls.
“Daddy can do it. He’s the fix-it guy!”
-My daughter, breaking another toy
My daily toolkit
These are the tools, skills, and processes I use almost every day either at work or in my home projects.
- Hand Sketching – both physical and digital – is a key skill that I use every day to communicate complex ideas in a quick, visually-impactful way
- Adobe Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop) for presentation, digital design, and enhanced sketching and rendering
- 3D CAD (Solidworks, Fusion 360, Sketchup, Blender) brings those sketches to life, testing proportions and designing details
- Mechanical Engineering for 3D printed prototypes, and optimizing slicers (GrabCAD, Bambu Studio) for quality prints brings the digital design into reality
- Basic Microcontroller Programming (VS Code/PlatformIO, Arduino-based development for Espressif and Nordic Semi chips) has been vital for prototyping LED Controls
- PCBA Design (EasyEDA, KiCAD)
My not-so-daily toolkit
As most of us know, Industrial Design can be a very unpredictable field to work in! I often come across problems with possible solutions that my team or I don’t know how to execute. To that end, I’ve had to get creative MANY times and quickly learn some new skills that I’m now familiar with – but not an expert.
Just for fun
These are skills I don’t use professionally anymore, but I still find them fun and enjoy them as hobbies.
- Woodworking! My first love in the design world. I love designing and building furniture for my home and used to do it professionally, designing several dozen pieces for homes, restaurants, and businesses.
- Leatherworking. A newer hobby, but a satisfying one. It started with my wallet, then I designed and made a custom, very over-the-top leather Traveler’s Notebook and I have several more projects in the pipeline
- Home Improvement. My house was built in 1928, and it shows…
- Raspberry Pi projects, including
- PiHole for keeping annoying ads off of my Roku
- Media streaming. For a brief time we didn’t have a Smart TV, so I reconfigured a RPi to “educate” our dumb TV
- Surprisingly, video game streaming with Moonlight and Apollo
- OpenWRT router for data security/privacy
- PC Building – I enjoy video games, use a Steam Deck as a home computer on occasion, and I designed and built a gaming PC for my wife recently
- Because of the above, Linux. Mainly using SteamOS/Bazzite and Ubuntu.
Work History
Vista Manufacturing
Details
Streamline Artisans
Working alongside an Architecture firm – Streamline Architects – to develop custom wood and steel furnishings for commercial and residential spaces. As the only designer, I worked directly with customers to bring their design vision to life, converting sketches into 3D models and developing 2D shop drawings for a team of welders and carpenters. I also managed pricing and materials, creating an inventory and quoting system that kept the shop supplied with steel and unique hardwood slabs that were used in our designs.
Education
International Center for Creativity
Details
Cedarville University
Bachelors Degree – Industrial and Innovative Design International Center for Creativity; Columbus, Ohio
Vista Manufacturing – Industrial Designer
Elkhart, Indiana
Streamline Artisans – Fabrication Designer
September 1, 2018 – January 3rd, 2022
East Moline, Illinois
Working alongside an Architecture firm – Streamline Architects – to develop custom wood and steel furnishings for commercial and residential spaces. As the only designer, I worked directly with customers to bring their design vision to life, converting sketches into 3D models and developing 2D shop drawings for a team of welders and carpenters. I also managed pricing and materials, creating an inventory and quoting system that kept the shop supplied with steel and unique hardwood slabs that were used in our designs.
Bachelors Degree – Industrial and Innovative Design
Cedarville University; Cedarville, Ohio
International Center for Creativity; Columbus, Ohio
Home Depot – Hardware Sales Associate
Columbus, Ohio
Managed inventory, assisted customers, learned products within the hardware section, added responsibility over time to include cutting wood, cutting and threading pipes, rekeying locks, and cross-training to the Lumber and Plumbing departments.
High School
East Moline, Illinois
United Township High School
Graduated #12 in a class of nearly 400.