About Me

I’m Bert Jones—a design­er, prob­lem-solver, and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­al who believes great design should not only look good, but work beau­ti­ful­ly for everyone.

I live in Min­neso­ta with my wife of over 20 years, our four incred­i­ble kids, and our live­ly house­hold of two dogs and two cats. Life at home is full, a lit­tle chaot­ic, and nev­er boring—and hon­est­ly, that ener­gy fuels a lot of the cre­ativ­i­ty I bring into my work every day.

My jour­ney into graph­ic design didn’t start in a classroom—it start­ed behind a register.

Back in 1997, I was work­ing as a cashier at Office­Max when I dis­cov­ered some­thing that would com­plete­ly change my path. When the com­pa­ny launched its Copy­Max print and design depart­ment, I jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to move into this new space. I was drawn to the machines, the process, and the mag­ic of turn­ing ideas into some­thing tangible.

There was just one catch—there wasn’t much training.

So I cre­at­ed my own.

With a brand-new Mac sit­ting in the depart­ment loaded with unfa­mil­iar design soft­ware, I walked into the book­store next door, bought a guide­book for QuarkX­Press 3.11, and start­ed teach­ing myself—right there on the job. That moment set the tone for my entire career: curios­i­ty-dri­ven, self-taught, and fueled by a deter­mi­na­tion to fig­ure things out.

From there, I dove head­first into learn­ing every­thing I could—design soft­ware, print process­es, lay­out tech­niques, and prob­lem-solv­ing strate­gies. But the real turn­ing point came in the spring of 2001, when my broth­er-in-law Aaron, a pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design­er, helped me land a posi­tion as a desk­top spe­cial­ist at an Alpha­Graph­ics print shop.

That expe­ri­ence was transformative.

Instead of the­o­ry, I was immersed in real-world design—working with actu­al clients, nav­i­gat­ing tight dead­lines, solv­ing unex­pect­ed prob­lems, and learn­ing what it tru­ly means to deliv­er results. Under Aaron’s men­tor­ship, I devel­oped not just tech­ni­cal skills, but a deep under­stand­ing of the print indus­try and the prac­ti­cal side of design that you sim­ply can’t repli­cate in a classroom.

Today, while work­ing in anoth­er print shop, I run my own cre­ative pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny from home, offer­ing a wide range of ser­vices includ­ing graph­ic design, event plan­ning, pod­cast pro­duc­tion, and dig­i­tal acces­si­bil­i­ty remediation. 

Over the years, I’ve con­tin­u­ous­ly expand­ed my skillset—not just to keep up with tech­nol­o­gy, but to stay ahead of it. I’ve devel­oped exper­tise in tools like the Adobe Cre­ative Suite and acces­si­bil­i­ty stan­dards such as Sec­tion 508 and WCAG, help­ing ensure that dig­i­tal doc­u­ments are usable by every­one, regard­less of ability.

That acces­si­bil­i­ty work has become a core part of who I am as a designer.

Because for me, design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about inclu­sion, clar­i­ty, and impact.

I love work­ing with busi­ness­es, orga­ni­za­tions, and indi­vid­u­als to take their ideas and turn them into some­thing pol­ished, pur­pose­ful, and effec­tive. Whether it’s a print­ed piece, a dig­i­tal doc­u­ment, or a full cre­ative project, my goal is always the same: cre­ate solu­tions that work—and make peo­ple say, “That’s exact­ly what I needed.”

Look­ing ahead, my long-term vision is sim­ple: to grow my busi­ness to the point where I can work ful­ly from home, focus­ing entire­ly on cre­ative work that chal­lenges me, sup­ports my clients, and con­tin­ues to evolve along­side the ever-chang­ing world of design.

Because at the end of the day, I’m still that per­son who picked up a book, opened a pro­gram, and said, “Let’s fig­ure this out.”

And I haven’t stopped since.