Mini Biography: Spencer Johnson

Beginning
I was born during a tornado warning with sirens blaring in the hallway of Madison General Hospital. I think that gives my life an interesting start to life, don't you? I was always playing with Legos and tinker toys way back when. Creating abstract new buildings, weird vehicles, just expressing what was in my mind. It was the start to my design career.

Design
I am a creative person and graphic design was just a natural fit for me to jump into. I don't remember the first image editing software that I used, but it was very basic. I started creating banners and wallpapers on wrestling (I was a fan back in the day) and gaming forums. Then Adobe Photoshop 7.0 was released, and it was love at first install.

The very first graphic I made with Photoshop was a Jason Voorhees banner, it looked awful! But as I learned the program inside and out with some help from online tutorials, my skills grew and grew. I then started competing in "graphic battles" on those forums as well as some design forums. Just for fun, no prizes except for pride.

After high school, I knew what I wanted to do with my life and that was Graphic Design. I enrolled in the Graphic Design program at  Madison Area Technical College in the fall of 2007. At first I didn't care for the illustration classes, but I grew fond of them over time. Painting and drawing just are not two of my specialties, though I do enjoy them. After 5 semesters of hard work, tons of fun, meeting amazing peers, teachers and designers, I had my portfolio show and graduation in mid December 2009.

Through the years, I have developed a clean and organized style of design which is always evolving. Page layout and dreaming up advertising campaigns are some of my favorite aspects of my career.

Photography
As well as being a designer, though I don’t have a degree in this field, I am a self taught photographer. I started off with an Olympus digital point and shoot camera which was bought at Circuit City (rip) years ago. It was only 4 megapixel, had a terrible interface, no manual controls, it was basically a huge pain to use, but I loved that little thing and and could look past it's major flaws. I was able to make the best of it, but it was time for a change.

My first DSLR was the Nikon D40. This little guy had manual set of controls which was a great change of pace. From there, I learned what each setting did and how it affected the final outcome of the image. This was the camera I took on my graduation trip up to Lake Superior in the summer of 2007. That week, I look over 1350 photos, 700 of which were decent. I then moved onto a Nikon D80 and acquiring multiple lenses, which helped me learn even more about different settings on the camera.

For those wondering, I currently shoot with a Nikon D90 and a wide array of lenses.

Tech Head
I’m a VERY frequent visitor of TWiT Live, which is a technology centered podcast network. TWiT (This Week in Tech), TWiG (This Week in Google), TWiT Photo, TNT (Tech News Today) and Macbreak Weekly being a few of my favorite shows on the network. When I'm not watching those live shows & podcasts, I'm visiting all the different tech blogs out there; CNET, Techno Buffalo, TechCrunch, Engadget and Mashable to name a few. I'm a tech nerd, and I love that fact.