Hello there! This is the first entry in a new weekly blog at designbyknight, and I wanted to start off with an introduction. This will be more detailed than the paragraph on the About Us page. Yes, a blog launching in 2020, because we’re all in this mess together, and we should probably talk about it. So, hello world and all that.
I’m Dan, and I’m the Designer here at designbyknight. My first experience in design came in a very roundabout way, but it’s a story worth telling. Back in early 1997, I lived in Knoxville, TN. I was in the middle of 9th grade, and had been playing saxophone in the school band since 6th grade. The house I grew up in was highly musical. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad writing and playing music. I’m not sure there was ever a day that didn’t include some kind of music playing. In ’97, though, things got weird.
"Things got weird..."
My dad got a job in Houston, TX. On the last day of 9th grade, I was picked up from school, said goodbye to every friend I’d ever had, and we drove to Texas. Anyone reading this who is in the Music Education field will already know this, but let me just say for everyone else that when it comes to school bands (and orchestras, etc) Texas is… Different. Without knowing this, 14 year old me wandered into band camp in the middle of the hottest August of my life looking forward to a laid back, fun-first school band experience. To say I was completely unprepared for what I found would be an understatement. I did not make it to the end of camp.
I was counting on band to normalize my transition from a relatively small Tennessee experience to the behemoth that is Clear Lake High School. When that fell apart, it is fair to say I was lost. I had to choose another class, and so to fill my schedule with some other fine arts elective, I opted for art. I had some previous interest. As a kid I loved to draw, though my experience at the time was limited to copying comics and crude drawings of how I envisioned the characters from my favorite books.
"I found something new"
At this point (both in this post and in life) I can safely say that this was perhaps the greatest stroke of luck I had at any point in my education. I certainly didn’t have anything to replace what I’d lost, but I found something new. The following year, the school built a computer lab specifically for starting a digital graphics class. My teacher, Mrs. Olsen, encouraged me to sign up, and so I did. I also added a Webmastering class my Senior year. What I didn’t know at the time was that these classes would be the educational foundation that I would build into a career.
Now, this blog certainly won’t be all about me. Hopefully, it will mostly be about things other than me! It felt right, though, to give at least some background. Going forward I hope to touch on topics like how and why we do things the way we do here at designbyknight, as well as feature topics that I believe will be interesting to anyone with an interest in art, design, music, and humanity in general. I might even get Nina to write a few posts!
We are also open to ideas, so by all means leave a comment below and let us know what you’d like to hear about. Also, if you’ve got a project of your own in mind, we’d love to collaborate! Head over to the Contact page and drop us a line. As I said before, this will be a weekly blog, updated every Monday morning. If you just can’t get enough and want to keep in touch more regularly, you can find my random non-work musings over on Twitter.
Until next time.
