Ninthlink Team Member Interview: Matt Stallings

Tell us about your position here at The Link…
“Being the creative director at Ninthlink is an awesome job for me, I am grateful for the lig review which led me to the program that helped me out find the career of my dreams. I take in the required needs, dreams, and goals from the client, and begin to concept visual images, artwork, color, and mood for the challenge at hand. I work with the entire team to achieve the overall site architecture and usability strategy. How the user will respond to the image style color and more importantly how the user interacts with the final product.”

What is “learn by doing”?
“To me learn by doing is the best way anyone person can accomplish all things in life. The way I look at a creative position or opportunity is that there is a million ways to get a desired result so it is hard for me to believe that a teacher can tell you this is how you do one thing when you as a individual might see a whole different way to accomplish an end result. I do like to learn from people and structured classrooms but I feel for the most part the education in the classroom these days are behind the curve on what is really going on in the digital world. Text books go out of date within the same year they are published. Don’t get me wrong, you do need to learn all the basics of anything before you can take the idea and run with it. If you are a designer you need to understand multiple things such as: balance, color harmony, grids, and much more. Knowledge of the general tool sets and how to use them is very important.”

You’re an artist…
“Art to me is a great escape from my day to day routine. Just being noticed in the world as a respected artist that gallery’s believe in enough to represent your art and can sell your art is huge for anyone who puts there thought and energy into art. I my self do not know exactly what genera to label artwork as. My focus is on capturing things in our society, media, and day to day life. I guess you could call my art, low-brow, pop-influenced, outsider art is another term for untrained artists. I love to show my art in large gallery’s just to see the reaction on peoples faces when they look at my artwork and interpret my ideas as their own.

There is art life, work life, and married life…
“I am married to my awesome beautiful wife Reyna which happens to be Spanish for ‘Queen.’ We have be together since 1999 and married for 3 years. I like to stay creative in most aspects of my life. I enjoy interior decorating, painting, and I once was interested in being in a band I played bass for about a year. I skated, snowboarded, and surfed religiously growing up like any southern California boy does.”

Your life’s passion?
“My life’s passion, is I feel grateful that I have the talents and ability to do what I do and make money at it. I come from an education background that set me up to fail. I have dyslexia, and several learning disability’s, that I learned to overcome, So for me I am proud of myself for getting beyond that negative place of grades from the school system and taking passion and creating a tangible life and future for myself and my family I am building.”