HifiSpin

04/08/2026

Congratulations to Dr. Jim Baker!

Dr. Jim Baker was reelected last night to the Tulsa Technology School Board. His campaign design focused on a modern aesthetic to distinguish him from other candidates.

02/28/2026

02/28/2026

You don’t always get months to build a brand system. Sometimes you get four days.

A few weeks ago, I built a full visual campaign for my father-in-law, Dr. Jim Baker, for the Tulsa Technology Center Board of Education. Strategy, positioning, typography, print collateral, yard signs, digital assets, merch, and a consistent visual language that could appear anywhere from a front lawn to a laptop screen.

The goal was clarity and authority: bold type, disciplined color, minimal noise, and a single message repeated with conviction. Campaign work is about speed without losing structure.

When the clock is ticking, systems matter.

01/01/2026

Happy New Year!

12/27/2025

Here is how I assembled my animation for ' holiday greeting this year. Looks fast and easy, but it took a few hours. I did not have a plan for this; I just went by instinct.

12/24/2025

I wish you all a peaceful holiday and a promising year ahead.

Be kind. Be empathetic. We have far more control than we think.

12/20/2025

When insomnia rolls in, the world quietly opens up.

You can meditate. Binge-watch a show. Read a book, doom-scroll people building off-grid shelters with nothing but hand tools and grit. Or, if you’re strange like me, you research.

For the past year, my sleepless hours have turned into a ritual. Screenshot after screenshot on my phone. Fonts. Color palettes. Layouts. Textures. Little design moments that made me stop scrolling. Everything was dumped into folders on my desktop and carefully sorted.

Some might call that obsessive. I call it infrastructure.

It’s a design system, not for clients, but for speed. A personal visual library. Points of reference. A shared language I can speak fluently when it’s time to create. All great directors watch films. All great writers read constantly. All great musicians consume music. This is just my version of that habit.

Somewhere along the way (I honestly don’t remember how), I stumbled onto a service called mymind. And without exaggeration, it’s the best tool I’ve used in months.

Now, when I’m scanning Instagram, Facebook, or the wider internet and something catches my eye, I don’t screenshot it and promise myself I’ll organize it later. I save it. Typography. UX/UI. Color palettes. Poster design. Done.
It’s kind of like Pinterest, but Pinterest never worked for my brain. The flow always felt noisy, the interface cluttered. I never stuck with it. Mymind feels calmer. Intentional. Like a private space for ideas rather than a public performance of taste.

Between the mobile app and the Chrome extension, I can capture anything: social posts, websites, articles, in a single click. And over time, the tool starts to learn how I think. It suggests tags. It recognizes patterns. As I save, I can add new categories or reinforce existing ones, slowly teaching the system my design vocabulary.

Less friction. Less chaos. More creation.
And when the insomnia hits?
At least something useful comes out of it.

12/13/2025

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the simple things in life—mostly because I spent decades ignoring them...

I’ve always considered myself a workaholic. And when you love what you do, it’s easy to justify the obsession. It doesn’t feel harmful. It feels like passion… until you realize passion has a shadow side.

My dad was a workaholic, too. Our relationship was complicated—full of admiration, frustration, and a kind of distance that only makes sense once you’re older. He worked because he loved it, but also because it kept him moving past things he didn’t want to sit with. I didn’t understand that as a kid.

As an adult, I saw the cost more clearly. Missed birthdays. Missed milestones. Missed moments that don’t come back. Even when he was in his 80s—cancer, asthma, exhaustion all stacked against him—he still felt like he hadn’t done “enough” each day. The grind had become his identity.
And that’s the part of him I never wanted to inherit.

But in many ways, I did.

After years as a Creative Director, I hit a wall. It wasn’t the work—it was the environment. The pressure, the pace, the misalignment. It wore me down in ways I didn’t see until I stepped back. Burnout doesn’t announce itself; it just quietly unravels parts of you.

So I restarted my business.

Not out of desperation, but out of self-preservation. I wanted to create work that meant something again. To choose clients whose missions I respect. To have a life that isn’t built solely on deliverables and deadlines.

Here’s the unexpected part:
Every morning now, I wake up excited. Grateful. Curious. Learning more than I’ve learned in years. New tools. New techniques. And—this is the big one—actual self-care. Not the “when things slow down” version, but fundamental changes: health, boundaries, better habits, space to breathe.

Because here’s what I’ve learned:

Working hard is a gift.
Working without living is a trap.

And so many of us—business owners, founders, creatives—walk that line without realizing how thin it is.

I’m still figuring out what balance looks like. I still slip back into old patterns. But I’m paying attention now. I’m trying to break the cycle rather than repeat it.

If you’ve ever felt torn between your passion and your well-being, you’re not alone.

Most of us don’t need more hustle.
We need more awareness.
More honesty.
More moments where we choose to be present rather than productive.

That’s the part of the journey I’m learning to honor.
The simple things.
The things I lost sight of for far too long.

11/27/2025

We learn by watching, paying attention, and actively listening. My Mom never showed me how to make her Thanksgiving Stuffing. I just watched her make it for so many years, and I instinctively knew how to make it. I was the taste tester. The joke was always, “Mom, I think it needs a little more Thyme.”

I am thankful for my family, friends, and clients.

I wish you all a safe and joyful Thanksgiving.

10/15/2025

Thanks to the City of Dover and Reid Bickley for the lovely article on HiFiSPIN.