Qualifications

I hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southwest Texas State University, have been in the design business since 1990 working at design agencies and photography studios, either full-time or freelance, and started my own design studio in 2003.

I have extensive experience in design and production using Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash.

I admin a Linux server and host many of my clients websites.

I am constantly learning about new technologies, learning ways to optimize websites and I put as much good design in front of my eyes as I can.

Here's my resume in case you wanted to check it out.

Official Stuff About Me

My first experience doing graphics was for the High School Yearbook. I used Pagemaker and a Black and White Mac Classic. My first real graphics job was during College at a Design Studio inside a Kinko's. Mostly just greek event flyers, graduation announcements and the occasional "real" design for a poster or tri-fold.

My College classes basically taught me to be clever, but since they got their first computers during my 3rd semester, they didn't really have a curriculum built around the machines, so I sat and taught myself Illustrator, Photoshop and Quark, building fake newsletters and posters.

Right after I graduated, I got a call from a friend who was still in school about a potential employer. It was a photography studio with one of the first digital cameras in Texas. I started work that day. They taught me how to do a clipping path and a drop shadow, and I was off and running.

Six years later, I took a management position at a sister photography studio on the 3M campus in Austin. This is about the time I started building websites for the band I was in at the time using Pagemill and FrontPage.

About a year later, advertising assets were temporarily frozen at 3M, but I had just gotten an offer from an old friend in San Antonio who needed a Senior Designer for a Web Development Company.

I moved to San Antonio and worked building websites until the company had to lay most of us off because of restructuring. I had started freelancing at home and on the weekends whenever the opportunity arose, and when I got layed off, I saw an opportunity to start my own business.

But I was offered a job at a design agency. It was a good job, and it was fun, but it was time to move on. After I left there is when I got my DBA and started pounding the pavement.

I was hired on a contract basis by a publishing company for a few months, and then later by a major grocery store in Texas to help with their website. This put money in the bank and educated me more than I could have ever paid for.

Now I'm in College Station, Texas doing websites, logos, print, and game development for companies not only in Texas, but across the nation. I've actually done some work for companies in the UK and Poland.

I can't get a decent line-of-site wireless signal out in the country, so I'm on Satellite Broadband.

I really love doing what I do.

Fun Stuff About Me

I've been an artist ever since I can remember, always drawing. I remember winning a poster contest for a dental office in Spain back in 1980, where the bull was a molar and the bullfighter had a cleaning instrument. And earlier, I remember winning a cap and belt buckle for a drawing I did for the Big Red Soda Company. I even won something for a "Say No To Drugs" cartoon I did in High School.

I'd say my biggest influence growing up was Sergio Aragonez with his "marginal" cartoons in Mad Magazine. I still fill sketchbooks with strange cartoons without words. Funny how things stick with you. I've made some of my cartoons into wallpapers.

I own a metal Sesame Street, Hot Wheels and Davey and Goliath lunchbox, drink coffee, don't like beer and my favorite children's book illustrators are J.Otto Siebold, Jane Simmons, and Holly Hobbie. I like watching Michel Gondry's work.

My wife and I have 4 children, we have an acre of land in College Station, Texas , I built a treehouse in our backyard, it has two sections with a bridge between them, and both section have two stories. I play guitar, piano, drums and bass (and pretty much anything else I can get my hands on). I've made a couple of PVC didgeridoos, a pvc shakuhachi and a couple of cajon box drums. I like exotic musical instruments. And I want one of these.

Take a look at the wallpapers section. There you'll find a bit more about what makes my eyes happy, and what my illustration style is these days.

I'm writing a few blogs, one of which is Stories from Papi, a collection of stories I tell my kids, and Ideas From Jorge, which is full of webmaster tips and reviews and stuff. Another one is about the city where I live (Bryan/College Station, Texas) with reviews and interviews and fun stuff to do, and I also run a Weekly Ringtone blog, where I compose original ringtones and post them for people to download for free.

Thanks for reading.