John Davis

I caught the writing and design bug very early in my career. Nearly thirty years ago, while working as a lead support technician for a CRM software publisher, a co-worker told me  his strategy for finding career happiness—"do what you want, and eventually someone will pay you for it." I wanted to write, and taking his advice to heart, I soon became the sole person responsible for all customer-facing text that left our department. I also realized that helping clients use our custom database designer was one of the highlights of my job, so after transitioning into Documentation, I became the go-to designer for the company's own databases and assisted with new feature designs. It was while working in this capacity and designing a new set of icons that I thought, "I'd do this for free." A slight exaggeration, but I did enjoy it. PC Magazine would later describe those designs as "nifty"—a recognition some people would consider insignificant, but it was a fun bit of confirmation that I had found my calling.

Decades of technical writing, design, and project management followed, punctuated by the occasional familiar conversation with new developers who had to be convinced that my OCD was beneficial. After all, would Microsoft create a form with fields misaligned by even a single pixel? They would not, and that is the standard of excellence I demand of myself.

Hans Hoffman