When I was in second grade, I wrote a letter to Santa Claus asking for a submarine. And I made sure to include my hand-drawn, detailed blueprint of my dream submarine. I wasn’t just interested in having one – I wanted to understand how it worked. I wanted to see the structure behind the surface.

As I grew up, that instinct to explore never left.

I come from a family of builders. In 1945, my great-grandparents started a concrete block company that helped shape Northern California’s freeway system. As a child, I heard plenty of stories of how things were designed, constructed, and put together. So it was probably inevitable that I would gravitate toward buildings things myself.

When I was a little bit older I began teaching myself to code because no one offered a class. By middle school, I was building websites. In high school, I was working with two nearby design firms on projects for businesses in the auto, music, and construction industries. That early exposure shaped how I see design – as something that must be both visually compelling and structurally sound.

Years later, being diagnosed with ADHD explained something I had already learned to work with: my brain prefers depth. I don’t skim industries. I study them. I look for structural gaps, messaging inconsistencies, friction points in the user journey. Then I refine.

Today, The Sea Is Dark blends imagination with infrastructure. I design websites and brand systems for established businesses that want clarity, authority, and measurable growth – not another template with different colors.