James has been a creative person ever since he was old enough to hold a pencil at the age of 4. He started drawing on every scrap of paper he could find to the point where his mother couldn’t keep typewriter paper in the house without James finding and stealing it.
He never stopped drawing throughout school, and in 1995 He was accepted to the Graphic Design program at the Nova Scotia Community College in his hometown of Truro where he had formal training in all the basics of design: composition, aesthetics, form, function, typography and pre-press, all of which revolved around learning the best graphic software available, Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator. .
Upon graduation with honors, He was accepted into Interactive Technology also at the Nova Scotia Community College in 1997, where he learned to use his design skills to create websites, CDRoms, video production, 2D and 3D animation and programming. Immediately after graduation in 1998 he was hired into the booming web industry. This was his first experience not only dealing with a team, but also working directly with clients on a project-to project basis. During his 11-year career he worked for a number of professional companies performing both web and print design, gaining experience through a wide variety of projects and clients, both large and small.