I was born in the 70′s and grew up watching WWF. Not this WWE they have now. With there multi-threaded story lines or their flashy video montages. The way you used to push the story back in the days was a one on one interview with the man Mean Gene Okerlund. Brother! That’s how you tell a story.

When I was still playing the NES, way before CD players, Playstations and Lisa Turtle ever appeared in my world, I lived for wrestling on Sunday afternoons. If the wrestling gods were appeased, I was blessed with the arrival of Saturday Night’s Main Event. Which to me was pretty much the greatest thing a kid wrestling fan could get. Well next to getting Wrestlemania Tickets. (a feat I have yet to accomplish)

On these rare Saturday’s I would have to beg my mom to let me stay up late just so I could watch it… or wait til she fell asleep and sneak into the living room and watch it anyway. (Sorry if you’re reading this mom… I’m not the saint you think I am 0:-)

FlashForward 15 or so years and WWF is getting Ric Flair slapped (woooooo!) by the World Wildlife Fund for rights over the WWF title and website. At the time I figured there’s no way they could lose… But looking back at history, those animals turned out to be stronger than Animal (Road Warriors… look it up.) So to pay homage to my nostalgic mood. I present to you a compromise of sorts. A newly imagined amalgamation of two WWF’s This is the all encompassing, unified WWF logo. Enjoy. Please and if you get a tatt of this please send me a pic!

So this week I did a flash back to 1995 when I used to work at Youth Communication. Its here that I got my start in the world of graphic design and desktop publishing. My friend and mentor/big brother/father figure, Efrain Reyes, gave me a job when I had no experience, no degree and  no sense of fashion (I wore braids, shades and occasionally overalls.) My first published piece, illustrated cover and website I ever built was achieved here. I also learned about what it takes to put together a monthly magazine doing hand pressed layouts, using self developed photos and a waxing machine. Sorry about all the packs of film I ruined… it was all part of the learning experience. At YC, I learned about computers and gained my out right disgust for Quark and till this day I won’t use that program, I hate it so much. I’ve turned down jobs because that’s all they used. Ahhh Thanks for the memories Youth Comm.

To make a long story short, Efrain and YC set me out on a journey to be the artist that I am today if not for them I would’ve never had the knowledge or the fortitude to teach myself the ins and out of design if not for the things I learned at my first real job. I was a terrible employee, I was always late, made tons of errors and never really appreciated the opportunity that I had. But Efrain was a patient man and I really thank him for all that he’s done for me so when the opportunity arrived to help out I was willing to do so. Its not much but its my way of  saying thank you for all that you did for me over the years.

Thanks Efrain.

Here are some images from my time at Youth Communication. This weekend I’ll post up a bigger gallery of illustrations from that time. There’s a lot… some better than others. All in all, I did the most illustrations of any artist that ever worked for YC clocking in over a 100 illustrations in my 5 years there as an editorial artists and Production Assistant. Let me know what you think.