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Growing Up
Since I was a child I have been creatively talented. I was always making, drawing, or painting something. It helped I was sounded by many creative family members that kept me challenging my skills.
I started to notice my talent for graphic design in 5th or 6th grade when I started doing reports and presentations. Of course at that age and where we were in the world technology I didn’t know what graphic design was. Anyways, I became very obsessed with the visuals, and the layout of my reports and presentations.
Although, I think I was in like 2nd or 3rd grade when I designed my first logo [It was for my all-girl band MJ²].
Middle School & High School
Then in middle school my creativity took a dramatic turn when my grandfather, hero, teacher, and my inspiration to be the best human I could be passed away. It completly broke me and I was absolutly devisated [ I still am as I cry typing this.]!
Theodore Golubic was an amazing artist and motivated me to challenge my creativity. When he passed I lost a lot of my drive to do any art because it just hurt too much. So, through the rest of middle school and high school I didn’t do any art, and focused on my athletics.
As a result my traditional art skills suffered. Although, my burning desire to be creative was still there, and it did eventually come out. Just more in the form of graphic design, than traditaional art. I fell in love with making motivational signs for my volleyball teammates. My reports, presentions, and project diaramas became my creative outlet.
Again, I still had no idea that what I was doing could be a career. So I focused on my second passion, sports. I worked hard to be the best athlete I could be, and in the off-season I worked as a Student Athletic Trainer for my high school. I learned as much as I could about being an Athletic Trainer, and decided that is what I would persue for my career.
1st Year of College
A year before graduating high school in 2004 I developed an unknown condition that made playing sports nearly impossible. So my senior year I didn’t play volleyball, but pushed to keep doing my athletic training. My hard work paid-off when I was accepted into the covident Athletic Training Program at Northern Arizona University, under Hall of Fame Athletic Trainer, Mike Nesbitt. It was a dream come true!
Unfortunalty, that dream was short lived and came to a screaching hault when my condition started getting more and more serve. I was in the hosptial constiently and most days could barely walk. So I had to withdraw from college, head back to Phoenix where there were more doctors avaible to try and figure out what was wrong.
I was certian it would get figured out quickly and I would be back at NAU in no time. Boy was I wrong! Not knowing how difficult it would be to find a diagnoses I contiued my studies thinking I would soon be back on track to becoming an athletic trainer.
Putting my talent to work
Then in 2006 I offically started putting my talent for graphic design to the test when I started to do graphics, overlays, and posters for entertainers on Myspace and YouTube in my spare time. Needless to say I was hooked! It was an amazing feeling to help someone so much with something that was fun and came naturally to me. Also, it was work I could still do for the most part even when I was in the hospital, or laid up in bed.
Soon, after my first few clients I started getting asked to design logos, and that is when I started to see how gifted I was in branding. I instinctively wanted to make every thing cohesive.
From there my work kind of snowballed, and I decided it was time to get by knowlege of design on the same level as my talent by going back to school. So in 2009 I decided to go back to school for graphic design, as everything I knew to that point was self taught.
Career Shift
I was still dealing with my condition, but this time I wasn’t putting such a physical demand on my body, as I was with Athletic Training where a team of people were counting on me. When I couldn’t walk, or was in the hospital I let my professors know, and I did the work from home. When I saw the direction my work was going I decieded it was time to start Jes Motta Design. I wanted to do things my way and work on the projects that would bring me joy, while physically & mentally dealing with something that was very depressing.
Slowly but surely I got through it and graduated from Northern Arizona University in 2012 with a degree in Visual Communication. Now it was into the real world, which I can confedently say college does not prepare you for…lol. Yeah, I was working in the real world making Myspace overlays for comedians and musicans, but it is a whole other ball game when you start working with companies.
Mad Men
During my time at NAU I also fell in love with my now wife. A few months out of college I jumped into the deep-end and started working for an local AD Agency. Where 95% of this work was car advertisements, and let me tell you that car ads are possibly the most frusturating design work ever. Sometimes it was fun and creative, but most of the time it was just a puzzle of content you have to make fit and cross your fingers it looks good in the end.
I worked my butt off during my time there [as I do anywhere I work], even though most of the time I probably should of been in the hospital instead. I learned more than any designer ever should need to about working with problem clients, and how to cut out cars like nobodies business. Eventually, I got thrown under the bus enough times, to save someone elses. I left because it wasn’t worth my physical and mental health to be treated so poorly.