The Story So Far

I grew up in a small town about 20 miles west of Atlanta, Georgia. Played hide and seek at Peek-A-Book Kindergarten. Read Tom Sawyer at Beulah Elementary. Discovered girls at Stewart Middle and learned to drive at Lithia Springs High. I was a middle child with two crazy sisters. Dad is a straight-shooting truck-driver with forearms that still intimidate me. Mama is a quiet Southern Belle that makes a great peach cobbler. The first album I bought with my own money was Frampton Comes Alive! "Do you feel like we do?"

In 1985, I ignored a partial scholarship to Savannah College of Art & Design and instead apprenticed at a small newspaper called The Sweetwater News Enterprise. My responsibilties were basic typesetting and paste-up but I knew my future would be in publishing. The simple Farmer’s Almanac content left me uninspired, so I answered a classified ad in The Atlanta Journal and left the Enterprise for a large-circulation tabloid called Cycle News. A well-oiled machine, Cycle News was more magazine than newspaper and employed real editors, talented photographers and high standards of production. I was still doing simple paste-up, but  was happy to be there. When CN closed it’s Atlanta office, I was hired by a four-color magazine called AutoBuff that featured custom cars and topless babes. Strippers the owners of the magazine scooped out of local bars. AutoBuff is where I finally cut my teeth on editorial page design. Those early layouts were primitive but so were the magazine’s standards. It might have been the subject-matter, but I spent more and more time on the light-table editing 400 Kodachromes down to ten. Or, five. When we began publishing Sports Cars Illustrated, I had even more opportunities to work with photos and design pages. Collaborating with Editors, learning the off-set printing process. I even began writing headlines as placeholders until the editor provided final copy. Nothing more than puns. A story about the Lamborghini factory? I typed in Bull Run. Often, those placeholders became permanent. When I became more efficient at the entire magazine process, I began setting the pace. When Sports Cars Illustrated was sold and moved 2,000 miles away to Newport Beach, California, I was named Art Director and went along for the ride. Just me and the Editor. That was 1988. I was only 21.

It was the dawn of desktop publishing and the magazine’s benefactor provided us with new Macintosh computers. We had a parking lot full of cutting-edge sportscars and someone had to drive them. Someone had to photograph them. My eye became more sophisticated and so did my layouts. After a few years, I was beginning to feel at home in Southern California. Bought an old Toyota 4x4 and explored the Southwest.

When Sports Cars Illustrated (Now Sports Cars International) was sold and relocated to San Francisco, I stayed behind in Costa Mesa and became a designer at Pfanner Communications. Soon, I was Art Directing multiple titles, including RACER and Jet Sports magazine. Full page ads, gatefold and inserts for Honda, No Fear and Skip Barber Racing. PR materials for various IndyCar race teams. Race programs for NASCAR events across the country. Setting the standard higher with each project but lying awake every night, trying to stop my mind from racing with endless concepts and tedious production details. I was paid well and named Senior Designer but eventually, I ran out of steam. When Pfanner couldn’t provide an assistant and instead piled on more assignments, I snapped and set out on my own to see what this freelance concept was about. It was the only way I could find to come up for air.

Between design jobs, I took photos for the local alternative weekly and worked just hard enough to maintain the modest lifestyle of a bohemian artist. Referred to myself as semi-retired at only 30. Mornings kayaking around Newport Bay. Afternoons at the gym or on the bicycle. Nights at the bar. I spouted big thoughts from little books and reveled with illusions of enlightenment.

“Hi, Keith. This is Paul Dean from Cycle World magazine.” A voice said from the ether. “I’ve been following your work and want you to Art Direct our Harley mag Big Twin.” Paul was an old pro and I was stoked to be on-board such a legendary title. Paul and I became masters at producing low-distribution, fledgling imprints with only a few ads getting in the way of our sprawling layouts. Paul soon signed me on to design CW’s annual Buyer’s Guide. And, later, we began another series called Travel & Adventure. These mags lost money, but our work looked great in the lobby. The string of regular assignments kept me busy enough to buy a streetbike and enjoy solo adventures along the coast. Northern California, the Central Valley. Arizona. Met people. Took pictures. Wrote stories. By now I was 35.

“I have an idea for a feature-story,” I offered in a production meeting for Travel & Adventure. “We put a guy on a Harley and send him cross-country with a camera and see what happens. Instead of hiring (and paying for) a writer and photographer, we find a talented rider that can do both”

“Just who do you have in mind?” Paul asked rhetorically. “You ride. You take pictures.”­

"You're right," I said. And that’s when things really got interesting.