World-Wired: Beyond MATC Article January 11th, 2006 by Mike
At the very tail end of 2005, I happened to stop by my alma mater, Milwaukee Area Technical College to see 
instructors and friends. While there, I was introduced to the PR department (which is very near the place I used to work as a student). Somehow, I managed to get an invitation to be the topic of an article for a new online magazine at the MATC website, Beyond MATC.
In December, I received a call from Julie at MATC’s PR department, where I shared stories and insights from my years as a design student, about my work now and remote working in general. It was a great discussion — touching on globalism, distributed teamwork, creativity, blogging and more. Unfortunately, much of our discussions had to be trimmed from the final article (seems like a great reason for an MATC PR Weblog).
This week, Sue, the MATC staff photographer stopped by to take a few photos to accompany the article, to complete the process. Sue and I had a great time on the shoot, with a side benefit that my office is all clean and tidy. ;-)
Today, I was notified by Julie that the article was online:
World-Wired: Mike Rohde Serves Global Clientele
Here’s an excerpt:
You never know where on earth an MATC degree might lead. For 1989 Commercial Art (Graphic Design) graduate Mike Rohde, it led to colleagues and clients in Germany, Spain, France and Ireland. Rohde creates corporate logos, Web sites, Web applications and business blogs for firms around the world, working from his home office in Wauwatosa.
Privileged to be able to combine his passions for design, technology and new ways of working, he is, simply, an artist at heart. “I had always loved art and wanted to be an artist, but my dad warned me about ’starving artists’ and how hard it could be for me to make a living,” he says. So Rohde came to MATC for a night class in photography, which led him to the Printing associate degree program.
That program required classes in commercial art, and from there he found his calling. “The other students in printing said, “What are you doing here? You should be an artist.’ One great thing about MATC is that you are required to be exposed to other areas. I got good cross training between printing, commercial art and photography.”
His cross training also included working as art director for two years at MATC’s student newspaper, The Times, and a part-time job in the college’s Design Centre as a student graphic artist.
On the article page you’ll not only see a few shots of me in my office and kitchen, the photographer took a few shots of my sketchbook, some with a recent logo done for Panoramio and a shot of our kitty Jasmine playing around with my Faber-Castell pencil. Gotta love the cat photo!
BTW, it’s funny to me that my Mac is not shown in the photo above, while the crusty old vanilla PC I use for testing websites is — someone might get the idea I’m a PC user or something! :-)
The entire experience was very positive, all the way from the phone discussion with Julie to the photo shoot with Sue. I’m very happy with the article. Thanks Julie, Sue and MATC for the opportunity!
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