Helen Kalisher

Let's get one thing straight from the start. That's me on the right...

I was born in England. I received a B.A. with honors from London's Chelsea School of Art and designed award winning children's books for Usborne Publishing and travel guides for Dorling Kindersely before setting off for adventures abroad.

Those adventures included a range of odd jobs including: paper maker, jam maker, Jillaroo, crocodile farm assistant, camel handler, dive boat assistant, English teacher, bead maker, rock art guide and I even started and ran my own newspaper in Mexico.

I met my husband Jesse in the jungles of Guatemala. He invited me to San Francisco where I landed a job with marchFIRST designing for clients such as Apple, Barbie and Pixar. In the year before the demise of marchFIRST, I created, among many things, the Apple iTools logo which has recently been transformed, unchanged, into Apple's .mac logo. You can still see my handiwork across Apple's website, not to mention in the templates of the iDVD program and on the outside of select Apple software packaging.

In July, '01, Jesse and I left for the better part of a year abroad. It turned out to be a remarkable time to be traveling, world events being what they were. The photo here was taken in Egypt's Sinai Desert where we were on a two-day camel safari in early November, '01.

I like to think that my experiences abroad have helped me grow not only personally but professionally. I have been lucky enough to have spent time amidst Mayan ruins and Egyptian pyramids, Nepalese stupas and Thai temples; I have seen modern art from the Turks and the Masai to the ancient rock drawings in India and the Australian Outback. I try to let all of these experiences influence both my daily life as well as my professional work. Because we, as a race, as an amalgam of humanity, are only as good as those who have come before us. And that which we are able to learn from them.

I am now based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.