About DesignParc and Reid Walley
From Rubylith, Border Tape, wax machines, X-ACTO knives, and Letraset rub-on letters at The Sacramento Observer newspaper in 1983 to working on a laptop while sitting at a coffeehouse and managing website content and designing business cards in 2020.
Along the way, a love of t-shirt design, behind-the-scenes photography, logos and stationery for my friend’s startups, modeling scout and fashion photo shoots, web graphics for the Internet, WordPress and content management, graphics for social media, fast-loading images for mobile devices.
My name is Reid Walley, and I’m based in Sacramento, CA.
A love for t-shirt design
Learning t-shirt design and printing at Sunrise Sales in Sparks, NV, gave me a life-long love of t-shirt graphics. I designed, printed and sold my first “Mozart” graphic tees at the Pioneer Center in Reno, NV, in 1991, during their performance of Mozart’s Requiem to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death.
Behind-the-scenes pics are the best
Music producer and recording engineer, Tom Gordon, owner of Inspired Amateur Productions, recommended my CD design services to many bands who recorded at Granny’s Recording Studio when he worked there in the early 1990s. I ended up taking many late-night/early-morning behind-the-scenes photographs of recording sessions for some of the CD art. In the following years I came to really enjoy taking behind-the-scenes pics of fashion photoshoots that I produced; fashion and trunk shows produced by Isha Casagrande in the early 2000s; and acting as Production Photographer on David Howe‘s film sets.
Eventually, the Internet became a thing
After years of designing logos, business cards, stationery, brochures, sell sheets, and folders, my clients started asking about website design. In 2001, I designed my first website with WYSIWYG editor NetObjects Fusion; eventually graduating to Macromedia Dreamweaver (now owned by Adobe). The transition from CMYK and press-checks to RGB and HTML scared the shit out of me. Then in 2005 my brother Lance Walley asked me to deliver just the design portion of a business website he was co-producing. It was the first time I actually purchased a book on the subject: CSS for Dummies.
Got into WordPress in 2007 because a client wanted to simply replace an image and some text on their website, but couldn’t because they didn’t have the Dreamweaver software I’d used to create their HTML site. WordPress changed everything! Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress and Joomla became what all of my web design clients use. I’m typing this text into WordPress right now 🙂
Modeling scout
In 2003 I started a graphic design t-shirt company in Reno called Girls Play Clothing, and invited a handful of friends and new acquaintances to model for the clothing catalog. Photography by David Howe, and hair & makeup by Summer Arthurholtz (formerly Pieren). At the same time, Isha Casagrande was producing her first trunk show for her Ciao Bella fashion boutique. Someone mentioned that I was good at finding modeling talent. Isha asked me to help supply models for many of her trunk shows, fashion shows, and eventually her Fashion Lounge Wednesdays, a weekly show at the BuBinga Lounge in the El Dorado Hotel & Casino in Reno.
In 2004, music producer Tom Gordon asked if I’d be interested in producing a fashion photoshoot for Jackie Love’s Shakti clothing line. I brought together models Candace Eddy and Bethanie Triplett, photographer David Howe, and makeup artist Kamla Greer.