The Web. It's the medium I'd always been waiting for. When the Web started to get some serious momentum in about 1996 I knew my love of words, type, images, and interaction had found a single home at last. The Web provides instant gratification -- no waiting for a brochure to come back from a printer. The Web provides instant distribution -- I can call a friend across the globe and say "Look at this site I did!" Ten years later, I do almost all my reading, communicating, shopping and business through the Web. I'm happy that I'm not just a consumer, but a creator in this important medium.
Software. I started writing computer programs at age 12, and by 16 I had a national distributor selling my games and utilities in computer stores. Of course I wanted to continue and expand my software business instead of going to college. But my parents prevailed and packed me off to Rice University, where I spent every spare moment cutting class and writing code. Out of college I worked on compilers for NASA, and then for a number of software companies. Ten years writing software and managing software development was enough for me, but I will always have a deep appreciation for software -- and technology in general.
Design. Whether it's constructing a marketing message, a publication, web site, or a piece of software, I see that I have the most fun when I'm visualizing something new, figuring out how it should work, working out the kinks, and fleshing out a vision. In software and web-based services I enjoy working with business-oriented people on one side and engineers on the other. I enjoy bridging that gap with good design and great communication skills.
Words. I've always been a wordsmith. I started writing stories around age 4. I wrote for every school newspaper at every school I attended, plus two college literary magazines, and at newspapers after college. At software companies the tech writers loved my notes -- one said "I can paste this right into the manual." I have Enron to thank for both exposing me to the world of marketing-think, and also for giving me editorial control of enron.com in addition to creative and technical control. I feel I have a good grasp of just about any mode of writing -- persuasive, documentary, or creative.
Visuals. Nothing arrests me like a beautiful layout, a beautiful object, a beautiful building. Between designing publications on paper, and graphical user interfaces for software, I fell into visual design. The more I did it, the more I loved it -- being able to create something beautiful is a great high. I never expect to master visual design nor be one of the great graphic designers, but I'm good at it, I enjoy it, and I never tire of looking at other people's excellent design and aspiring in my own work to be that good.
Interaction. The user interface, and how software interacts with the user, is arguably the most important part of any piece of software. The reason we write software is so that people will use it, benefit from it, and (hopefully) pay us for it, directly or indirectly. People come back when software is easy to use, and supports what they want to do. I view web sites the same way -- even the smallest web site is a computer program, subject to the same rules of good interaction design as any other software.
Typography. Obsessed as a youngster with typefaces -- pointing out to my parents where typefaces didn't match between two different pieces of packaging from the same company, or complaining that the typeface used in the opening credits of a movie didn't match the one used on the movie's poster -- I have always had a great love for type, and occasionally an annoyingly sharp eye. The mere choice of type can set the tone for an entire project, and convey so much more than just the letters of the alphabet.