building brands:

I've always been the designated flyer designer.  

From babysitting services flyers in Microsoft Paint to hand drawn pool party and sweet sixteen invites to actual product labels and future household name logos using CorelDraw 3 on a PC with a 4GB hard drive: I've gone through the paces. That 4GB machine? I acquired that while pursuing a degree in Advertising Design in Toronto in the late 90s. I used that machine to create my personal brand, build a revolutionary website, live chats back in 2001, download and edit thousands of pictures, build beats, record and edit tracks in Cool Edit, design those records' labels and write press releases for famous recording artists.

I got that last job^ at a booking agency while trying my hand at being a recording artist myself after moving back to Jamaica in 1997. With part-time work like that, small graphic design jobs and voicing party ads for radio, I could afford to concentrate on me and my brand, Quizz on and off the stage. Still a teenager and deeply immersed in the Jamaican music scene, I realized there's much more to being a star than just showing up in a cool outfit and entertaining the crowd. Plus, at that point, people weren't just asking for my designs and voiceovers but also for my IDEAS. They knew I thought outside the box and that my ideas were unconventional but saw that they worked. I quickly became a trusted source of imaging, branding and marketing advice for friends in the business and big brand executives alike.

Fast forward 25 years and a million ideas later and here I am in Toronto. A small fish in a big pond..? Nah. Those decades of experience have only broadened my scope and refined my ideas making more room for the best yet to come. My colours are brighter than ever and I don't ever plan on blending in.