My background includes designing and implementing on-message, effective creative projects, and services from concept through completion for a variety of high-profile clients. I have expertise in a broad range of design software applications and possess the ability to collaborate effectively with clients, peers, and senior management teams. I am confident that my talents and abilities will significantly benefit your organization or personal design needs. I am a systematic, organized, hardworking, and dedicated team leader with an analytical bent of mind. I have an innate sense of task prioritization, managerial aptitude, and result-oriented attitudes towards accelerating organizational and personal growth. My unique approach is to help businesses, professionals, and entrepreneurs be more efficient and provide a better service to customers.
I am originally from the northwest region of Philadelphia, PA, (known as "Uptown" to many) a historically and creative blue-collar city, where the people wear their hearts on their sleeves. Philadelphia is a culturally diverse and rich city where artistic expression is evident and encouraged. It was here that my interest in art first began. Growing up, I had a passion for comic books, sequential art, and an appreciation for various design forms expressed through fashion, media, and graphic design. Not surprisingly, all of these have ultimately stuck with me to this day. I enjoyed viewing fine art as well and can recall an early enthusiasm in learning that art can have deeper meaning than its intrinsic appearance and can touch people in substantive ways.
My artistic interest escalated as I began to study the works of the masters and found myself interpreting and dissecting the connotation of artistic works. My creations gained new direction and insight. Desiring to take my two-dimensional works and ideas to the computer screen, I "left the nest" and earned multiple degrees in the art and design sector.
During this time period, I continued to travel and polish my artistic talents by taking on many freelance art projects such as logo and tattoo design, t-shirt printing, flyer/cover/one-sheet design, digital illustration, painting, and others; which ultimately led to the birth of my freelance art/design business, SwayZe Ideations.
Like any artist, my many influences including my hometown of Philadelphia, it's urban, suburban and inner-city environments, at-risk youth, graffiti, Saturday morning cartoons, newspaper and Marvel comics, Hip-Hop music, education, several historical artists' works, the thrills and ills of society, etc. are embraced in my work. I take pride in the raw and biting messages of some of my ideations and creations, as these are times of needed honesty in America. I feel blessed, fortunate, and responsible in using my talents to be able to create a lane to speak for a community and culture that needs expression and does not have many avenues to do so.
Many people ask me about the derivation of my style. I can never answer with just a quick reply; I don't know that anyone understands all of life's influences on one's development emotionally or otherwise; what I know for sure is that my life experiences, interests, and the influences of great artists past and present, have led me to develop my unique style of presenting real-life (often "raw") subject matter through visually soft imagery. My work is a compilation of all that is me!
- David W. Cage