Jonathan Andrew Myers

We'll make that around 10 years old. Let's say that happened around 1992. I was very interested in computers— specifically doing things on our Macintosh SE/30. I was recording audio and fussing around with it. I was using MacPaint to design spaceship dashboards and heads-up-displays that I would print out and use in make-believe play. Later, I began exploring HyperCard and made my own sort of animated multimedia shows. When I was 13, I got into the code of games. In one slot machine game, I changed the odds to be much more in my favor to see the winning sound and see the all the coins coming out. Then I changed the coins to be strawberries instead.

After that, my attention turned to playing drums and then creating music on computers. I learned how to create sound fonts and then composed my own music from samples on my micro cassette recorder. At the beginning of my senior year of High School I won the talent show by dancing to a song that I had created called "Oh, Baby. Where are you?" I leveraged Microsoft Sam Text-To-Speech to read out the lyrics, then cut them up by syllable, and mapped them to individual notes on my midi keyboard to be able to sort of perform them in the song. It was fun.

In my early twenties, I thought I might like to do something with animation. I enrolled in my local community college for an Associates of Applied Science in a track called Multimedia Technology with emphasis in Web Media. I learned HTML and that blew my mind. You didn't even need any special software to create a web page. Flash was the jam at the time. A golden era for the internet. It had all the magic of HyperCard and more. I made a game called Human Mutant Melon Mashers. That was a delight. I learned web design, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver. Video Editing. After Effects. Cinema 4D. Acting and improv. It was a feast.

My first job job out of school was creating print ads for a 3x5 accordion-fold "flight guide". I cut my teeth on creating shiny gold text in Photoshop and making things 'pop'.

Then I moved into Web Design proper and learned how to design and build Drupal sites. I created animated commercials and more print work. More websites. Then Squarespace came out and I felt like the world of web design for small-ish sites was not as needed as much.

In 2012, I transitioned into the big leagues and got a job as a UI/UX Information Designer with Markit On Demand (previously Wall Street On Demand). During the ten years I was there, I leveled up everything working on very large projects for very large financial companies. I learned how to own enterprise-level projects and work with large cross-functional teams. I designed sites, created animated commercials and dynamic data videos. I composed music. I co-won a hackathon and won a photo contest. I wrote many emails.

After 10 years at Markit, I was invited to lead design over at Artnet by a former colleague. I jumped at the chance. After working on so many different client projects it was fun to dive deep into a single platform. I got to lead the redesign of Artnet's flagship product— the Artnet Price Database. A sine qua non in the fine art auction world, it hadn't been reimagined since the early nineties, back when I was using MacPaint as a ten-year-old. It was a joy to work with so many teams, explore the technologies that we had to work with and dream a new dream for Artnet. The new Artnet Price Database had a celebrated release to much fanfare.

During the Spring of 2023, I ventured off to build my very own thing— a new way to search and discover artist paints. To accomplish this, I dusted off those very old coding skills and learned React, Next.js, Tailwindcss, and Supabase. An exciting time of personal growth and discovery. It launched to the praise of artists from over 80 countries and the regard of industry professionals. After about a year, we created our own YouTube channel which got me back into my video roots. The site is growing, our audience is growing. It's been a lot of fun and I'm excited to see what's next.

I'm grateful for this life.