I was born on 03 Dec 1971 in Saigon, Viet Nam, and three and a half years later, I immigrated to the United States with my father, mother, sister and one aunt. I grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland and attended Gaithersburg High School, where I graduated in 1989.

Shortly thereafter, my family moved to Orange County, California, and I attended Otis College of Art and Design. There, I majored in communication design with a focus on illustration, but by the time I graduated in 1993, I had already decided to become a graphic designer. In the years following, I worked in traditional print design, but in 1998 I moved to New York and began practicing design almost exclusively for the Web and other interactive media.

In 2001, I joined several colleagues from my previous employer (who shuttered their design operation in that year’s market downturn) in founding Behavior, a design studio. I helped manage and run the company for four very successful years, and I left on good terms on 31 Dec 2005.

Since January 2006, I have been been working at The New York Times as the Design Director for NYTimes.com.

I’m currently in a relationship and living in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. I’m lucky to have the best canine companion a guy could ask for in Mister President, a black Labrador-mix that I adopted in December 2002.

I’ve owned the domain Subtraction.com since 1997. In its first few incarnations, it served as a portfolio and a venue for me to showcase my non-commercial design work. In December 2000, I added a weblog using Blogger as a publishing tool. In April 2003, I converted the site to the Movable Type publishing platform and began writing posts of more significant length. In September 2008, I replaced Movable Type with Expression Engine.

I make an effort to reply to every email sent to me directly, and I’m always happy to hear from readers.