Twenty Years of Making Things That Matter

Casella Creative home base in Carmel by the Sea

In 2006, I was home on paternity leave with a newborn daughter asleep in the next room. I had a stable corporate job with a corner office, a good salary. On paper, it was exactly where I was supposed to be. But every spare moment I wasn't thinking about diapers or bottles, I was thinking about design.

That was the year I started Casella Creative.

Not because I had clients lined up or it made financial sense. Because I knew that if I didn't build something of my own, I'd always wonder what could have been. Twenty years disappears faster than you think.

Today my daughter is getting ready to finish college, and somehow those two milestones, her graduation and Casella Creative's twentieth anniversary, feel inseparable. I've measured the life of this business by watching her grow up.

Graphic design has always felt natural to me.  I'm not the most talented designer in the room, but I genuinely enjoy solving problems. When I meet a client, I usually see the solution before we've finished the conversation. Sometimes it's a brand. Sometimes it's a website. Sometimes it's photography, a film, or simply helping them communicate with more clarity.

There were years when money was tight. Projects disappeared and the phone stayed quiet longer than I wanted. Like anyone who's worked for themselves, I've had moments where I questioned everything.  I never questioned the direction. There's something incredibly valuable about deciding where your own path leads. I've always believed autonomy is one of the purest forms of wealth. It doesn't guarantee comfort. or success. It gives you ownership over your time and  work. That's always been enough to keep going.

If the first decade of my career revolved around logos, print, and branding systems, the second evolved into something much broader. Today I'm just as likely to be producing video clips, photographing products, building websites, managing social media, or helping clients shape their online presence. Photography has always been the backbone. Everything else has simply grown from it.

The biggest lesson twenty years has taught me isn't about design. It's about adaptation.

The designers I've admired most, Michael Osborne, Saul Bass, and Paul Rand, weren't remembered because they followed trends. They understood ideas and embraced new ways of making those ideas visible. Every generation gets new tools. Great designers don't resist them, they learn them.

Today that means AI, video, motion, strategy, and platforms that didn't exist a few years ago. The fundamentals haven't changed. Curiosity still wins. Craft still matters. Story still matters most. Technology doesn't replace taste. It amplifies it.

The clients who became friends. The businesses that grew. The moments when someone looked at a finished project and said, "That's exactly what I was trying to say." That's why I started Casella Creative.

Twenty years later, I still feel the same excitement I felt sitting at home in 2006 with a sleeping baby beside me and a blank notebook full of possibilities. Here's to the next twenty years.