It's a hot day in late august 1986,

my friends and I had just finished a basketball game and decided to take a break before dinner. What happens next changed my life forever.

We watched a movie. It was a new release called Innerspace starring Dennis Quaid as an unpredictable military pilot gone medical research guinea pig. If you haven’t seen it I’m not going to ruin it for you, but this is the reason I got into advertising. Well, sort of.

See it wasn’t the acting, the plot or anything like that. It was his car, a 1968 cherry red Ford Mustang GT. I had never seen anything like it and I fell in love with cars from that moment on. I remember asking my dad to park next to the coolest car in the parking lot anytime we were shopping together. He finally called me crazy when at 8 I could name the not only the brand of tire based on it’s tracks in the snow, but get all the way down to the model.

But here’s the kicker. I thought I was learning about cars. Turns out I was learning about style through cars. I studied everything that had four wheels and an engine from the 1800’s to the latest on the road.

So I’m guessing you want to know what my first car was, huh. Well, it was a Mustang…but I couldn’t afford the classic. I was lucky enough to drive a Jet Black 1993 Mustang GT (that I later fitted with nitrous for drag racing) to high school. I even took my senior pictures with the car. Hey, I warned you, I’m a car nut.

By the time senior year came around I had it all figured out. I’d be a car designer, working on none other than the future Ford Mustangs. The only trouble was no student counselor ever mentioned a “portfolio” and I hadn’t done much art other than my own doodles during class. So, I headed to art school in the biggest city I had ever been to, Chicago.

I threw a couple things together and attended a portfolio review to get into The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This was a HUGE deal for me. I never really considered myself a painter or anything, but I got in to one of the most prestigious art schools in the country. 

Only trouble was SAIC didn’t have an automotive design curriculum or even an industrial design program. So, I started in visual communication and found my true calling.