Who is Mark Jardine?
I’m a multi-disciplinary artist and designer who loves to dabble in a bit of everything…a jack of all trades, master of none of sorts. I’m always learning something new and love taking skills to other disciplines. Right now I wear all the creative hats for a small software company, Tapbots, which I co-founded. Before Tapbots, I worked as a user interface designer at Oakley. I currently reside 30 minutes north of Dallas, Texas and live with my wife, three boys, and a corgi.
Outside of work, I have a passion for cars and bikes. I spent about 10 years driving on race tracks which included many track days, time attack competitions, and even a tiny bit of wheel-to-wheel racing. But as I started mountain biking more and progressing my skills, bikes slowly took over more of my time and I’ve been riding since 2017.
Artist, Designer, Photographer?
Throughout high school and my first few years of college, I wanted to be an illustrator…a character designer to be specific. I had a passion for drawing and while I knew my work wasn’t great, I hoped that my skills would grow over time. After a couple years in college, I became interested in 3D modeling and animation. I started looking at the 3D arts program at the SF Academy of Arts. But doing all the math for the tuition inevitably scared me away and I ended up attending CalState Long Beach to go into their Graphic Design program.
While I was interested in graphic design, CSULB at the time had a strong focus on print/identity design. I learned a lot there, but I was much more interested in the web. There wasn’t much if anything at all as far as classes in web design at the time so I spent a lot of my time outside of school learning how to design and build websites. Eventually I ended up dropping out of school to work full time as a web designer as that’s where my passion was and I felt like I was learning more outside of school than in.
8 years later, I landed my peak corporate design job at Oakley where I was a UI designer and front-end developer. I really enjoyed my time there. That was also around when I was also becoming very interested in icon/UI design for the Mac. After the first iPhone was released (and eventually the App Store), Tapbots (the software company I helped co-found) was born.
Because of my work at Tapbots, I also came full circle and learned a bit about 3D modeling and rendering. The learning curve has been very steep, but I’ve figured out enough to get most of what I want done. Of course there’s still an endless amount of things I want to learn, but I tend to take 3D on an as needed basis depending on the project.
My passion for photography was born from my love of cars. I started shooting my own cars, and then other people’s cars. I’d say product photography is where my interest and experience lies. I’m an amateur photographer at best, but love it and has been an integral part of my toolbox as a designer.