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408-370-6521
colin@colin.org

About Colin

I live in Silicon Valley. I've been creating ads and brochures for business for thirty years.

When I was Associate Editor at Santa Barbara Magazine, I wrote ads as well as magazine articles because one of the services the magazine offered was free copywriting for ads. That led to more ad and brochure work, and I took a job writing print, radio, and TV on the Dodge account at BBDO Detroit for a couple of years, then returned to California to be a freelance copywriter.

Graphic production, too

I've been doing graphic production since I was a kid. My father was a lettering man and calligrapher and type designer (he designed the Cadillac logo) and I grew up as slave labor helping to produce silkscreen prints.

My first job out of college was at a regional Sears center doing graphic production for dozens of full-page newspaper ads every week, as well as copywriting.

I bought my first Macintosh and a LaserWriter in 1987 and became absorbed into Pagemaker and Illustrator and later Photoshop when it was introduced.

I did contract graphic production and desktop publishing in the Bay Area through the 1990s working through Aquent (nee MacTemps).
I also got into BBSing in 1987 and began producing an on-line magazine in 1989.

I began my own Web site in 1995 and since 1999 virtually all my work has been on-line. I was the Webmaster for Zircon from 1999 to 2007 as a contractor, doing not just the writing but also all the HTML and graphics.  I also wrote text for Wal-Mart.com.

Ardent baseball fan (SF Giants)
Science fan
Daily bicycler

Fiction and Articles

Colin reads a lot


 

I can help you
develop content
for your Web site.

If you care whether or not people read the text on your site, I can be useful for you.

People are blasé about their own industries and don't realize how interesting they can seem to an outsider. Usually their existing text is vague and generic. I can edit it down to the essentials and fill their text with true interesting facts.

With your help, I can develop an authoritative text.

I start with an attitude of throwing the company wide open for inspection, of making an effort to explain the company rather than expecting the outside world to make the effort. I write brochures that give a client a fresh look, a clear window into the company that invites response. I can make any company interesting to an outsider.