“A Brief History of Me”

I was born November 24th, 1973 in Clinton Harbor, Connecticut. I was raised on and around boats and the water. My father was the captain of a 38’ Hatteras motoryacht that was kept in Cedar Cove marina. I caught my first fish, a small sand tiger shark, off a dock there when I was 4 years old. I’ve been hooked on fishing ever since. In 1977, I moved with my parents to Fort Lauderdale when the yacht’s owner decided to base it out of Bahia Mar marina. I spent many hours each day fishing off the docks catching a variety of fish species native to the South Florida Intracoastal waters. When the fall of 1979 rolled around, I started kindergarten at Harbordale Elementary.

The owner of the yacht my father captained preferred to migrate his boat’s location each season. Keeping it in Fort Lauderdale from Fall through Spring to be near the Bahamas and the Florida Keys, and having it in the New England waters during the Summer months to visit ports from Maine to Lake Ontario. This meant I had the opportunity to travel the East coast about 3 weeks each summer, and catch fish in nearly every port we stopped at along the way. It was quite an experience for a kid to be traveling by water, seeing so many different environments, and learning the ins-and-outs of boating. When the yacht’s owner came aboard, my mother and I would leave to visit family in New Jersey, often traveling on the helicopter or Lear-Jet that the owner flew in on. By 1982, the owner had upgraded to a 56’ Hatteras motoryacht and continued with the same yearly migration.

My parents divorced in 1983. My time was divided into weekdays with my mother and weekends with my father. Although it was an unfortunate situation, I now look back and attribute much of my life’s success to the diversity I experienced in the years that followed.

After completing the 4th grade, I moved to western Boca Raton with my mother and began 5th grade at Loggers’ Run Middle School. In 1986 she remarried. I now had a stepfather, and 3 stepbrothers who lived with their mother in New Jersey. My new stepfather worked for IBM, and we soon had a computer at home. This is when I was first exposed to computer graphics, in the form of a simple 8-frame block animation program. The programs available back then were very basic, but interesting enough to occupy me for hours on end. I had always liked to draw and build with Legos, so the computer simply became a new creative tool. I soon learned "turtle graphics" using Logo in a computer class in school. As my stepfather brought better computers home, I learned PC Paintbrush, Splash, and I even fooled around with an early version of AutoCAD. Although my interest was high, I had no idea that I would make a living by drawing with a computer.

While staying with my father on the weekends, I remained exposed to the technology and innovations of the boating world. In the spring of 1986, a new form of technology entered my life in the form of a low-end radio-controlled car called the Hornet. It wasn’t much more than a toy in the beginning, but then my father found a small off-road track in Coral Springs where other hobbyists raced their cars on the weekends. My first day of racing earned me a 2nd-place trophy in the entry-level “box stock” class. I was hooked. The next weekend, we went to a track located in Fort Lauderdale. They would alternate weekend events between off-road, dirt oval, and on-road races. This would be my home track for the next 4 years.

I barely knew anything about using a screwdriver or making electrical connections when I started. But a year later, I was scratch-building my own race-winning cars with help from my dad. I experimented with different materials, mechanics, electronics, and chassis design for the varied types of races. I eventually became specialized in dirt-oval racing using scale Outlaw sprint cars and 2- and 4-wheel-drive full-bodied late-models. Each chassis I hand-built was custom designed specifically to beat the snot out of the competition. And there were plenty of competitors... often over 150 entries per week. By the end of my racing ‘career’ in 1991, I had won several championships and over 200 trophies in local, state, regional, and national events. But what I really earned was extensive, hands-on, practical experience in mechanical and electrical engineering. I can trace most of my mechanical skills back to those 4 years in my middle-teens.

During the time I spent racing on the weekends, I attended school during the week. I excelled in my art, shop, and computer classes in middle school, and was placed in several gifted-level academic programs. I continued this trend in Spanish River High School in 1989. Unfortunately, academic classes began to bore the living shit out of me, and my grades in math, English, social studies, chemistry, etc., were on the poor side of average. An ultimatum was issued by my parents that linked good grades with the privilege of r/c racing. That’s what brought about the end of my racing career.

During high school, I had taken an interest in such things as airbrushing and car audio installations to fill the void left by r/c racing. I was able to make a decent amount of extra money selling custom t-shirts and installing ear-bleeding stereo systems into friends’ vehicles. Earning excellent grades in advanced levels of art, drafting, auto mechanics, electronics, and marine biology, it was obvious where my interests lied. ...and they were not among the “3-Rs”.

After I graduated from high school in 1992, I decided to attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale to get my Associate’s degree in “Visual Communications” ...a fancy name for commercial art. Now that a large amount of my parents’ and my money was being invested into my education, I chose to put effort into the required academic, as well as the artistic classes. I earned high marks in all the subjects that I nearly failed in grade school. The end result was a 3.7-something overall GPA. How ya like them apples? The 2 continuous years that I spent at AIFL included 2 semesters acceptance into an invitation-only “Design Honors” group responsible for developing projects for both the school and external clients. I also continued to develop my skills using computer graphics programs at home and at school, which would eventually lead to greater things.

After graduating from college in the fall of 1994, I got a job working the late shift at The Boca Raton News. I took an entry-level position as a production designer using Macs. The work involved creating retail ads for clients who advertised in the newspaper. I eventually got experience in the paste-up and pre-press departments too. The work was interesting, but the night shift was losing its appeal, and the pay was poor, though I did earn enough to secure a mortgage on a 2/2 condo in west Boca. When I finally decided to leave The News, I took with me a great deal of production, pre-press, and print knowledge, and had earned the friendship and respect of several coworkers.

In February 1996, I started a new position in the Creative Services department at an 83-year-old publishing company, CRC Press. CRC publishes mostly scientific books for professional research and academic learning. This time I had some experience on my resumé, but was still offered only an entry-level position. I quickly became familiar with the programs I was using, and began to excel in my design and Mac maintenance skills. My abilities soon earned me several promotions, and eventually Senior status. After about 2 years, some of the existing design staff began to leave the company. This left positions to be filled below me. I called a former coworker from The News, who soon joined me. He, in turn, called another former News coworker a year later. The process happened one more time a year after that. We were now a force of 4 highly capable designers, and friends, reunited at a different company. Although one of them took a higher position, which included management responsibilities, I retained my rank as Senior Designer and unofficial “Mac Guru”. I was involved in designing roughly 20% of all printed marketing materials for the company, including high-profile pieces for CRC’s flagship publications.

In 1998, while still working for CRC, I started to accept freelance projects. Early on, the work consisted of simple business cards, newsletters, and flyers, but soon advanced to book covers, book layouts, corporate identity packages, brochures, catalogs, magazine ads, and multi-faceted marketing campaigns. A few of my clients include: J.Ross Publishing and BocaAutoSpa in Boca Raton, FL; Pizza Mambo and Sable Voyages in Lake Worth, FL; Don Baker and Pageant Diva in Fort Lauderdale, FL; and Pizza Express in Bloomington, Indiana. I feel fortunate to have worked for clients with such different design needs.

In February 2003, a manager (and friend) working for James DiGeorgia & Associates, an investment research company, phoned to inform me of an available position in their graphics department. The design projects were more diverse and the salary was higher, so after 7 years with CRC Press, I accepted the new job. I now have a great salary, an awesome new car (WRX Project), an enjoyable job, and an expanding freelance design service. Think about it... One day, my 10th grade social studies teacher stood in front of our class, and announced that I'd never amount to anything, because I drew more than pay attention in her class. ...I wasn't ignoring her...I was focusing on my career.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

William G. Buckley

6/27/03