My Story
My full name is James Kenneth Broden. I am called Jim or James. Never Kenneth.
It’s my father’s name and I was taught to never touch dad’s stuff.
Technically, I am a freelance creative director and illustrator based in Montreal. I was trained in both graphic design and illustration which has led to a diversified life in advertising and concept art. I have illustrated characters and scenes for TV and film, designed logos, helped organized a company’s brand, created packaging and display art, written copy, and produced print ads from just a brief discussion with a client. I’ve planned and built websites and most recently produce mobile app graphics. I suppose that means I am “multi-disciplined” but whenever I read that term on a design studio’s website it just sounds annoying. Let’s call it versatile pragmatism.
To maintain the art director mystique I shave my head.
My Work History
Co-Owner & Sign Guy
While in school a buddy and I went door to door downtown selling hand drawn and painted signs.
It helped pay for school and for a while Ernie Butler used to call me Jon.
Co-Owner & Designer
With absolutely no experience we tried our hand as a design studio right out of school.
Naive but talented amounts to a lot of fun, tons of great stories but not enough clients.
Graphic Designer
My first real design job creating Yellow Page ads. Yes that Yellow Pages. I know. Now it seems quaint.
Not too bad a place to start. Better than separating films for t-shirts which seemed to be the norm for many.
Senior Graphic Designer
Great people to work with. Great place to learn as a designer. The company at the time was descending into madness.
There was a hostage taking at one point. Seriously.
Creative Director
More great people to work with except I got to be boss. Awesome experience professionally.
Big clients with huge campaigns. My hair did begin to fall out there which is now kept in a Ziploc at the back of my desk.
Owner & Creative Director
I have been working for myself for 20 years now. I have a small, reliable network of help for photography, programming and translations for when I need help. Plus Winnie is my dog. He’s very smart, incredibly athletic, and may one day take over the planet. I’m half serious.
Software
I have been at this for a while so software isn’t a big concern on the graphic side. I have all the graphic software of Adobe down cold. Though I still learn a few shortcuts here and there, I consider Photoshop pretty much mastered. And organizing the brush sets in CC now lets me keep all my created brushes under control.
I have been learning Zbrush in my free time between illustration and graphics but I’m getting there. I took a course at Syn Studios that help speed things up. I am also trying to conquer Blender. It’s a massive piece of software and incredibly powerful. Particularly for procedural environments. I also still use Google SketchUp for basic building environments and fill in any characters and objects with Dimension, Fuse, and Mixamo. All my 3D is used in setting up illustrations that get completed in Photoshop. I started playing in VR with Oculus Medium and with Nvidia’s AI software Canvas, both of which are mind-blowing.
In the absolute opposite of blowing one’s mind, I can make Microsoft office behave like graphic software when asked. Many clients require designed elements outside of Adobe products so I will set up materials in Word, Outlook, or Excel if required. It’s cumbersome to make Word behave like InDesign but it is possible. I have set up countless PowerPoint presentations and have many tricks I came up with to make it behave like video. Just ask if you would like samples.
