About me

What I do. (and have done)

I have many interests in the Creative field.
Professionally though, I like to think of myself wearing three hats:

• Designer (including web, multimedia, and 3d).
• Illustrator (traditional, digital, 3d, cartooning, caricatures, etc).
• Photographer (Macro, High Speed, Landscape and Infrared).

A “little” history…

*This may seem long-winded, but after all, it has been over 30 years of work experience.

I have had the advantage of being in the business long enough, to have experienced the change from analog to digital. My first jobs where at ad agencies, where I would work everything on paper, where being able to illustrate was a major plus and texts were added using Letraset and PMT, positive “final arts” where converted to negatives to send to printing houses, and everything was put together on drawing tables and tracing light boxes. Pencils, erasers, mechanical pencils and pens, markers, ink, brushes, watercolors, rulers, scissors, spray mount glue, etc. Those were the tools. Being a Graphic Artist, was about mastering those tools. About understanding how off-set color separation worked (CMYK), about being very precise. There wasn’t any UNDO command, if you made a mistake, it would get printed thousands of times, even hundreds of thousands, and it might mean a huge loss for the agency, or losing an angry customer.

And then, in the late 80’s/early 90’s,  computers arrived, and everything started to change, and those that were too old or too lazy to evolve, where left behind. It was hard at the beginning, computers where more mysterious beasts back in the early 90’s, but I’ve owned from monochromatic display PC’s with no hard drive, running everything from floppy disks (first type I used where 128kb floppies – the big ones), to whatever the latest specs software demand my new CPU to be, to work effectively and quickly. I think I tamed the beasts enough to get by.

My first design software experience was with Photoshop 2.0, CorelDRAW 1.0, Illustrator 4.0, etc. I’ve self-taught myself up to getting Certified in various design packages. Doing 3D. And other complex stuff, where the learning curve is steep, especially if you don’t have a tutor (I’m very thankful to those who share knowledge on the web, that’s why I believe in sharing freely as well – see my blog in “TOOLS & STUFF” under the ABOUT menu item for stuff I share myself). My first website was all done with HTML coding, no WYSIWYG. Using a text editor, and basically doing reverse engineering with other websites I took a look at. It was really satisfying seeing what came out of all that text separated by <> characters. Of course, I never became a coder, it wasn’t my thing, and I have learned over time, that you either are a good designer or a good coder/developer, you can’t be both. You will always be better at one or the other.

Maybe, because of having to learn to do things on my own and then enjoying the satisfaction of accomplishing my goals, is why I love to learn so many new things all the time. I have experimented with stereoscopy, virtual 3d, anaglyphs, anamorphic 3d, animation, video editing, interactive design (back when Adobe hadn’t eaten up Macromedia, and Macromedia Director still existed), extreme macro photography (at microscopic level) high-speed photography (complex water splashes, you can see in my macro website – see link in the main menu), and many other techniques and specializations that catch my fancy and give me a nice challenge to learn something new.

I have also been a small business owner twice (first a small media agency, and much later, a retail electronics store).
The experience of being an entrepreneur, coupled with having worked in various types of companies, from Jr. Designer in my early career, to Senior Designer, and later Team Lead and Department Manager (in all kinds of print companies, ad agencies, web agencies, newspapers, etc), and additionally, doing Freelance work since the very beginning of my profession back in 1986, have provided me with a broader scope and understanding of customer expectations related to their business needs.

When I approach a project, I see myself as a Consultant first and foremost, and my responsibility, as that of a business partner in a close second.
I place myself in a mental state, where I think of how everything I do during the project development could benefit my client’s business, I’m proactive, and if I have an idea or different approach to solving a requirement, I make sure to let my client know. The result of all that is, that the success of an enterprise in which I participate, is as important to me, as to that of my customer. And when I say “customer” or “client” it can also be, my full-time position employer.

Working experience

For more information on my work experience, please refer to my Linkedin profile:

If you want MANY references from satisfied customer ratings and their comments, you can visit my profile in Upwork.com:

Accolades

1996 – Bachelor’s in Graphic Arts, Universidad de Costa Rica.

Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) since 1998.
(By PROMETRIC while teaching at New Horizons Academy, CR).

CorelDRAW Certified since 1998.
(By PROMETRIC while teaching at New Horizons  Academy, CR).

Featured ★★★★★ Freelancer in Upwork.com since 2012.