People
The Firebelly Family is a tight knit collective of strategists, designers, writers and developers working hard to change the world.
- meet the team
- Dawn Hancock, Owner + Managing Director
- Will Miller, Creative Director
- Darren McPherson, Designer
- Charlie Smith, Motion Designer
- Shannon Medic, Program Director
- Lindsay McMenamin, Project Manager
- Alex Killough, Senior Web Engineer
- Name: Darren McPherson
- Title: Designer
- Digs: Imperfection
- Influenced by: Grafitti art and culture
- Misses: Ocean waves
- From a land: Down Under
Darren is hands–on. With his proverbial sleeves perpetually rolled up, he’s always ready to get to work. Whether he plunges in head-first or hands-first, Darren constantly looks for ways to bring a human touch to his work, literally or figuratively.
The native Aussie came to Firebelly as an apprentice in June 2009. We loved what he brought to the table, so we couldn’t let him leave. Darren’s a designer who likes to create typefaces from scratch to achieve a precise mood, or dream up ways to integrate graphic design and sculpture when it makes sense. He’s a master at cooking up new ideas and trying out novel approaches, particularly on the front end when he’s working to establish a project’s best direction. He’s just the kind of designer we like at Firebelly.
The son of music teachers, Darren grew up in Sydney, Australia, often drawing alongside his older brother (also a designer today). When an opportunity arose for his Dad to teach music in Hong Kong, Darren was in for a dramatic change of scenery. He discovered that he could thrive even when completely out of his element, and describes his time finishing high school in Hong Kong as the best of his life. After initially enrolling in college back in Sydney, he decided to again cross continents to study design in the states.
Darren prefers to be involved at every stage of his projects, which is one reason he sought work at a smaller firm like Firebelly. He loves “bumping ideas back and forth” with creative people of different specialties and backgrounds, and he likes to explore ways to take at least part of a project off the screen for a more intimate connection with the work.
Doing strong work for clients whose passion for their causes rivals his own for design gets Darren out of bed in the morning. He is at Firebelly to grow as a designer with good practices, judgment and ethics — and that can only mean good things for our clients.
If Darren’s not working, running or exploring the city, he may be conjuring new typefaces or creating his own dimensional art. Whether he’ll embrace Chicago’s beaches remains to be seen.
Darren studied at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design.