Fast forward a few years to 1995. I am a super band nerd. I played the drums, dyed my hair maroon and wore Doc Martens, so I was a cool band nerd, but still a band nerd. I was also in ART IV, the highest art class you could take. We had just gotten a new Power MacIntosh and Photoshop 3.0. My mind was blown! I started making tee shirts for the drumline. I remember on one shirt, I replaced the pencils for drumsticks in the famous M.C. Esher “Drawing Hands”. This was the first time I was expressing who I was as a musician, through art and design.

I continued playing music, eventually trading in the sheet music for rock music. No matter what band I was in, I was always the “Design Guy”. I picked the fonts that represented what our music sounded like (mostly free grundge fonts). I designed the flyers to try and entice people to come hear our music. Even as an amateur, I was branding the bands I played in, for better or worse. Sometimes it worked! A few of my bands gained some local recognition, and along with it, so did some of my designs.

Back in the office every day, I try and flip those band branding exercises I was doing on their head. When I am creating something for a client, I start to see the design as a piece of music. What is the tempo? What are the instruments? Is this a west-coast-backpacker-hip-hop kind of design, or a Memphis Blues kind of vibe? How will the audience feel when they hear this for the first time? Am I creating something that is in harmony with the other pieces that have already been created? 
These are the thoughts that go through my head. When I look at the work, I “hear” it. I see it as a complete composition. That’s when I start bobbing my head and feeling the groove. Good design can move you.