The Eyes Of An Artist

HOW I LAUNCHED MY DESIGN CAREER

Look closely at these pictures. Notice anything beyond my beautiful Mother?

I was born cross-eyed and was clinically diagnosed blind in my left eye. Three surgeries corrected my cross-eyes but not the vision in my left eye, so I wore heavy glasses as a little guy because the eye doctor said it might help. I hated ‘em!

At about the age of three, my intuitive Mother started to notice I spent hours coloring and doodling. One day, to entertain my sister, I drew fish shapes with a black marker all over her room. On the walls, the hardwood floor, the furniture, pretty much everything had a big black fish drawn on it. Even with that, my Mother still encouraged my love of doodling.

But back to the glasses and my “blind left eye”. When I doodled, she noticed I always took them off and would have my nose up against the paper, or whatever I was drawing on. What she did next was nothing short of brilliant.

One day, she came home with a handful of coloring books and an eye patch, I was about five. She sat me down and said, “Ian, I have some new coloring books for you. But there’s a catch, you can’t color in them. Instead, I want you to just trace the black shapes, you can use any color you want, but you can’t fill them in. Oh, and I want you to do it with this patch over your right eye.”

This tracing soon became an evening routine and lasted a few years. I don’t think a coloring book was left in any store in our small town during that time!

Drawing became my passion. I excelled in art in high school and I was determined to pursue an art career. In the summer of 1981, I was accepted into the prestigious Al Collins College Of Art And Design and graduated with Honors.

My first jobs were in the fashion industry as an illustrator and a layout artist. I was determined to further my career, so returned to college in 1988 and earned my degree in Advertising, and fell in love with the relatively new concept of branding. In 1993 I opened Branding Loud And Clear, an Advertising Agency focused on connecting brands through smart design. My professionally admired process of deeply understanding the people, the vision, and the mission of companies before crafting their extraordinary stories through brand positioning and design inspiration is our business differentiator.

If you like this story, let us help you tell yours: