About me…

As a kid one of my favorite school activities was the ceramics project we did every year in art class. I loved using my hands and a raw idea to help something take shape, and there was something fascinating to me about the final fired pieces seeming so like something you could buy at a store. Making something that felt real was such a neat experience.

As an adult, I still love the process that it takes to make something real. Something that people I’ll never meet will interact with, and hopefully use to brighten some part of their day. I currently work in kids toys, and I love knowing that somewhere out there is a little ten year old playing with something that I designed, and I hope that when they’re older that toy might be a bright memory from their childhood.

Toy design is a great opportunity to create products that touch people’s lives, but every product, from a favorite hair brush to a spoon grandma uses to make her secret pasta sauce, is an opportunity to create a special moment or boost someone’s day.

It seems people in our industry tend to gravitate towards certain parts of the design process, and for me it’s still all about the ideas and helping things take shape, though these days I use CAD much more than I use my hands. I’ve been lucky to spend my time in the industry heavily involved in the manufacturing process, and I love working with engineers and the particulars of complex injection molding almost as much as I love the sketching, CAD, rendering, and overall design process that gets us there. The projects I’ve worked on have called for innovation not only in the concepts but also in the techniques that make them possible, and I hope that element of my day to day work can follow me throughout my career.