ABOUT ME

Name:

PJ Bell

Location:

Los Angeles, CA

Alias:

MIXFIT

Weapons of Choice:

• 20in iMac 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo 2

• Wacom Tablet

• Nikon L3 Cam

• The Adobe Suite at my disposal.

Education:

• The Art Institute of Los Angeles

• BA | Web Design and Interactive Media

Awards:

• Desingers spotlight from stockphoto.com

• 2008 Designers Choice Award from D.Y.M.M Academy, UK

BIOGRAPHY

Hello,

Welcome to my online portfolio. My name is PJ Bell, but to the design industry I am known as mixfit. I like to say that my creativity and lust for design started when I got my first box of crayolas :) I started taking my design work seriously around 6 years ago. At the time I started working with Photoshop 7.0. Needless to say it took about 5 mintues before I frustrated myself right out of the seat and failed miserably at my first attempt. So naturally with my "failure is not an option" mentality, I decided to take a graphic design class the following year and go round-two with the design beast.

During my sophmore year of highschool I took a graphic arts class and I still remember skipping lunch and going to class just to work with all the different design programs: photoshop, dreamweaver, illustrator etc. I bugged my design instructor every single day asking how to do this or how to do that. To my benefit I had an instructor that didn't mind missing lunch :) I would say this was the time in which I knew that I wanted to do something in the realm of visual design.

After a couple of years of design experience under my belt I decided to take an R.O.C graphic design class offered by my school at the time that I ended up qualifying for. We did everything from Silk Screening, Photography, Graphic Design, Print Design, etc. You name it we did it. At this time myspace was the dominant social network on the web and I decided well, maybe I could actually make some money doing this whole design thing. So I started out designing a bunch of myspace layouts for five dollars a pop from the kids in my class. I had a great time and it helped keep me in lunch money.

Shortly after graduating valedictorian from my R.O.C class senior year of high school I knew that I was going to pursue a career in design. I remember meeting with a rep from the City of Bakersfield at the age of 17 years old filling out papers for my business license. I started building up local clientele doing basically any work I could get my hands on: Club Flyers, Websites, Logos etc.

I continued to freelance and work full time until I was about 19. I was going to a J.C. full time and well, I just felt as if they were wasting my time and money. After being told I couldn't take the design program due to some political academic hoop-law, I decided not to waste their time either :) To my surprise I got a call for the Art Institute of Los Angeles and decided to go and check it out. I knew after meeting with the school representative that this was where I needed to be. It was the perfect place to harness my skills and better shape my craft as a professional as well as an individual.

MIXFIT signifies the capability of being able to possess a mixture of different skill sets and being able to take and apply them to fit into any project that is thrown my way.

STAY CONNECTED

In this ever growing age of social networking, I have made myself available to just about all of them. The networks below are the ones I check frequently so please feel free to contact me.