Hello and Season's Greetings

[barrywh]

Hi, my name Barry.

I've been a graphic artist pretty much all my life, landing my first job at my hometown newspaper straight out of High School back in Palmer, Alaska ('79 Grad). I started out as a traditional photo-typesetter, cartoonist and layout/paste-up artist back before Macs were even invented and no one had ever heard of the "preview screen" or "wysiwyg."

My first computer was an old black & white 512k Mac Plus with (get this) 1Mb ram. I could put my entire OS and working Apps onto one 800k floppy boot-up disk and be set to rock. Applications included such classics as MacPaint, MacDraw, MS Word and a nifty little page-layout program called ReadySetGo! My first peripheral devices were a whopping 20Mb capacity external hard drive (about as big as a bread basket and loud as a small jet engine) and an Apple LaserWriter II. When Adobe came out with the first version of Illustrator... boy, I was in business. I've been rockin' on a Mac ever since.

I've worked at a number of large and small newspapers, advertising agencies, print houses, direct mail firms, publishing houses, etc. in Alaska and Washington State both full-time and freelance and have ridden the desktop publishing and internet waves as a designer/graphic artist throughout my career. My last full-time position was out here in Las Vegas, NV as a Senior Graphic Artist for their biggest daily newspaper's Special Advertising Operations Department.

Over the years though, I've had to personally deal with an increasingly insidious little disease called Rheumatoid Arthritis. Without going into a lot of painful detail, it has developed to the point that I have just been approved for Social Security Disability. This gives me time now to actually step back from those 10-14 hour working days and take a little breather. SSD doesn't pay much, so it's literally back to freelance work and doing the "starving artist struggling for survival" bit (again). It's actually nice however, to finally be able to work at my own pace (and as my condition allows) keep myself educated on today's ever-evolving technologies (which, by any definition, is a job in it's own self).

I now own this super-sweet new Apple 1.8 GHz iMac G5 running OSX 10.3.6. I've got the whole Adobe CS software suite as well as Macromedia's Flash MX (and few other little goodies in my arsenal), so I'm set to rock. I actually registered for membership in DC back in June of this year, but have been so busy, I didn't have the time I felt it took to be a consistent contributor. Today is my birthday, and I received best wishes in my email from the Staff yesterday (thanks guys). With my 25 years plus in graphics, I feel I am now in the position where I can hopefully be a positive contributor in the DC community on a regular basis. I am currently re-working my website and going through old work samples in order to generate a decent online portfolio, so once that is completed, I'll submit the application to join the Team...

In the meantime, am I correct in assuming it is okay for me to post submissions into the "Non-Profit/Charity" forum with my current status? I would love to have the opportunity to "get my feet wet" for now and get a feel for the community as well...

Anyway, thanks for reading what looks now to be more of a short story than an introductory bio... I am looking forward to being a part of DC!

Happy Holidays to all!

[resurepus]

It is a great "short story", Barry! That's the kind of introductions we appreciate here on DC! Hope you will keep posting interesting and informative messages in our forums!

And yes, you can post in non-provit section. Unfortunately the links on your website don't work, but when you set you portfolio up you may want to apply to become a DesignTeam member to get access to our main contests.

[illumina]

Hi Barry, welcome to DC!
I'm sorry to see you have RA, my Mother has that too, she's had it going on 20 years now, I understand how hard it is to live with.

The people here are great, I'm sure you'll have a great time here and make some great friends too. I hope your portfolio is fixed soon, I love looking at other peoples work, I appreciate their skills

[Afrostar]

Well, i must say that puts my introduction to shame :P Very interesting little story there.

Welcome mate, cant wait to see your portfolio! so get it up and running.

[barrywh]

... Unfortunately the links on your website don't work, but when you set you portfolio up you may want to apply to become a DesignTeam member to get access to our main contests.

Thank you for your reply, resurpeus. I look forward to being an active member here...

I clicked on the submenu on my name next (to my avitar) which takes you to my home page, and it worked. The web address is correctly entered on my profile page as well... Please let me know if you find anything else I can fix.

My portfolio is still a "work in progress" and will hopefully be up very soon after the holidays. It is my priority now while things are fairly slow during this time of the year. Thanks again!

[barrywh]

Hi Barry, welcome to DC!
I'm sorry to see you have RA, my Mother has that too, she's had it going on 20 years now, I understand how hard it is to live with.

The people here are great, I'm sure you'll have a great time here and make some great friends too. I hope your portfolio is fixed soon, I love looking at other peoples work, I appreciate their skills

Thanks, illumina!

Yes, I wouldn't wish RA on anybody. Those who have it and those with loved ones who have it know what I mean....

I look forward to having a great time here and, like you said, both sharing what I may know (in all my UNinfinite wisdom) and learning from others as well. That's really one the keys to getting better at what you do in many aspects of life. The spirit of good competition and the maybe even a little promise of some cash now then always helps, too

Thanks for your great reply! I'm sure you'll see more of me around here...