John Hamilton is the owner/creative director of John Hamilton Design, LLC a firm specializing in design for the publishing and entertainment industry which he founded in Bend, Oregon in 2006 and soon after relocated to Fort Collins, Colorado where they currently do business.
John is a graduate of California State University at Long Beach where he was a fine art major. The “Beach” as it is known among it’s alum has the distinction of being the alma mater of two very creative and well known Steves—Martin and Spillberg.
Early on John pursued fine art and was even invited to join an exhibition at his home town Museum.
He worked for a short time with Don Winton, a commercial sculptor in Newport Beach. Throughout his graphic design career he has continued to create sculptural works and feels it enhances his two-dimensional commercial work.
After Art School he began his career in package design and advertising. He then worked for a time with Ampersand in Pasadena, fabricators of state of the art architectual corporate signage. Ampersand collaborated with some of the top environmental designers like Deborah Sussman and John Follis. He had the opportunity to work on some major timeless projects like The California Plaza and Fashion Island at Newport Beach. Ampersand was a great place to combine his love of graphic form and three-dimensional objects.
After Ampersand John and his wife Nannette took a long sabatical in Israel and Italy, backpacking and touring.
This was a pivotal turning point for John and when he returned to the states he was offered an art director position with a division of Wycliffe Bible Translators, his first exposure to publishing. He stayed on for nine years with Wycliffe, never going overseas with them but developing a desire to do so someday.
John left Wycliffe to take on a post art directing Virtue magazine, a publication that actually had an art budget and it dealt with some real topics. It was here that he learned to love photo shoots and to give assignments to illustrators and photographers for the many articles, covers and columns. He remembers having the pleasure of working with talent like: Jay Maisel, Claudia Kunin and Gaylon Wampler not to mention some great illustrators.
He also really appreciated working with the many writers and editors in the daily task of marrying words with art.
The Magazine was sold to a large east coast publisher which gave John the opportunity to move on and discover book publishing when he joined the then start up imprint of Random House, WaterBrook Press. John was their first Art Director and played a vital role in setting up the Design departments foundation that continues to be sucessfull today. It was here that John came to realize that he found real joy in formation stages of a company and looked forward to the day he would start something of his own. It was a unique opportunity to be a part of the birth of an imprint and yet at the same time be related to the media mega-conglomerate Bertlesman and to learn how things were done at Random House and all it’s entities.
His work has been featured in Communication Arts and many of the books that he has designed have been award winners and more importantly best sellers with several that continue to top the charts.
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