A lot of my out-of-state friends and colleagues ask me why I run a business offering graphic and web design in my home town of Bozeman, Montana. I usually answer somewhat sarcastically with one of the favored sayings of the recently imported professional, “I’m livin’ the dream.” All sarcasm aside; I couldn’t be happier with where I live and work.

I won’t go on and on about the area; those of you from parts unknown can look at some of the surrounding area’s treasures and make your own judgment about whether this is truly, the last, best place. I will however, go on and on about the people who live here. They are truly a unique breed. While I do not enjoy many of the imported driving habits, I think they are the most driven group of entrepreneurial adventurers with whom I have had the pleasure to work.

The new Bozemanites are filled with great ideas, and some great causes. Bozeman hosts more non-profits than you can shake a stick at. I feel that there is a niche to be filled here for affordable, smart design using contemporary technologies. That is the real reason I run a business offering graphic and web design in my home town of Bozeman, Montana.

You see, I grew up in Bozeman. I lived here while my parents were young students; grew up skiing and snowboarding at Bridger Bowl; hiking, hunting and fishing in the majestic wilderness surrounding my little home town. It was a small town back then. Montana State was a great little school for engineering and agriculture. Bozeman wasn’t the sprawling, high-growth area it has become. It wasn’t “Bozangeles Montucky”. I had a great time growing up here and being a ski bum causing my fair share of small-town trouble.

After attending MSU and taking a good look at their graphic design school (which I still admire today) I realized that I couldn’t study the things I was truly passionate about. New media at MSU simply didn’t exist, and to learn it, I had to go to school elsewhere. I looked around and found Vancouver Film School. The perfect place to finish my education. They were rated in the top 5 new media schools in North America, and as an added bonus, I could go live in the most beautiful city I had ever visited.

After soaking up as much as my brain could hold at VFS, I graduated and got snapped up by a dot com company that was willing to get me a work visa. After a year of being their only designer and “go-to-guy” building websites and working with IBM to design their infrastructure, they went the way of most the other start-ups and handed me a pink slip. My wife and I had to leave Canada, and we set our sites on New York City.

I worked as hard as I have ever worked in New York. My 18 hour days at school seemed like a cake walk in comparison. I have never thought that $1,600 a month for rent was a good deal before. But the school of hard knocks proved to be the best education I could have asked for. The gleaming start-up companies of Vancouver had spoiled me. I was snapped back to reality, and fell in love with the greatest city on earth. New York always felt like there was some tremendous opportunity just around the next corner. I loved that feeling.

That feeling is here in Bozeman too. Maybe even more here than there. For the size of the population, there is a high concentration of great ideas and small businesses here; and it is very easy to get excited about the clients I work with. I love getting wrapped up in their energy and drive. It makes it easy to be passionate about their business and drives me to be a better designer. Bozeman clients are also very savvy with the internet and demand a lot from their websites. I am glad this town has not let me stagnate as a web designer. I am always being driven further by their needs.

While I do sometimes yearn for the good-old days of 20,000 people and graduating classes of 400 from Bozeman High School, I also know that if Bozeman was that town, I could not do what I love to do and live here. So this is where I am planting my flag. It might not have the same art as the Chelsae galleries do, everyone doesn’t wear black to work everyday, my glasses do stick out a bit more here than in NYC, but it is home. After many years of running away from home, it feels great to be back as a productive member of this ski bum society.