mikeyb
print designer/web designer/photographer
Hello, I'm Mike Brennan, here's a little bit about me. Born and raised in Hooksett, New Hampshire, but spent a lot of my education in Dublin, Ohio. It was in Dublin where I realized I had a passion for creation. The areas in which I spent most of my time were photography, music, and culinary arts. It wasn't until I took a computer graphic class my junior year of high school, learning Corel Painter 5, that I realized my real passion was for design. And it was from that point on I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
In design I saw an opportunity to combine skills from several areas that I already enjoyed, all hinged on new things that I would come to enjoy. I applied what i had learned about photography to building compositions that were easy to follow but not boring. From my musical background I was able to take the many parts of a piece and bring them together to make one complete part. From the culinary side I learned to try new things, but not to stray too far from the basics that make a design work.
It was with those tools that I hit Highland Heights, Kentucky, on the Northern Kentucky University campus in the fall of 2003. As a first year art major I was completely unprepared for the amount of art supplies I would need, and it was that $800 crater in my checking account that led me to seek the job that would set in motion a chain of events that would surprise even me.
In my second week at NKU I applied for a job as the Video Editor of the student news paper, The Northerner. I had some light experience with iMovie from high school, and that seemed to be all the help they really needed. I got the job and immediately started editing clips for the web, small features to be attached to bigger stories. It was a good job, but there was never a whole lot of work to do, so I spent most of my time with the Layout Editor and the Web Editor.
When the Web Editor quit, I gained his position. I was in charge of getting the website up on production night and making sure that all the photos were ready to go, and any extra content we had made it on the the site. I took on a site redesign that year, since it was my site, I decided to make it my own. Also in my first semester I became the Design Editor when that position was also vacated. Now I held two editor positions my first semester in college.
I help both of those jobs through my freshman and sophomore year until I was offered a job in Boston, MA working for that company that made the content management system that our newspaper website used. I moved to Boston, transfered schools and began my professional career as the Assistant to the Creative Services Department. I was responsible for completing new implementations of new student newspaper websites, print work and print production. From that position I eventually rose to my current position as Lead Designer/Print Specialist.