Our Staff
Meet the staff of Designer Visuals..
Johan has been working with computer systems since the 70's. He relocated from Oregon to La Jolla, CA in 1978, to live with his brother Louie, with the goal of "getting into more of a technical field". Johan's two older brothers were both computer scientists. As a sidenote, his oldest brother Louie attended the University of Illinois and took the first computer programming class offered in the United States.
Within a short time of him moving to CA, he and his brother Louie hand built a computer from a kit made by Heathkit/Zenith, based on architecture designed by a computer manufacturing company by the name of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
Using this computer system, which he and his brother affectionately called "Thumper" because of the noisy floppy drives, Johan learned BASIC programming within a couple weeks, and then soon after moved on to programming in FORTRAN.
In order to better learn programming and the FORTRAN language Johan created several games on "Thumper". He showed them to a scientist at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. One thing led to another and he landed a job there as a computer programmer. He worked with a team of scientists, which were studying bioluminescent organisms. He created several software systems to display data collected from equipment operating in the lab, as well as from an underwater buoy, which was submerged approx a mile offshore, including software to display data in a 3D format.
He later went on to work for a software company by the name of ISSCO Graphics, which designed business graphics software. He went from the Quality Assurance Dept, to Development, and then into the Research Dept, working for Ken Colby, the lead programmer in the company.
While he worked at ISSCO, he was able to attend several computer conferences known as SIGGRAPH, The Special Interest Group for Graphics, which is to this day the world's leading conference on computer graphics and animation. While attending these conferences Johan developed an affinity for computer graphics.
When Computer Associates purchased ISSCO Graphics in 1987, Johan went out on his own. Along with an investor friend of his, they formed a computer graphics service bureau by the name of Designer Visuals.
In 1993 Johan relocated back to Portland, Oregon and has lived there ever since. He started his own company, Integrity Computer Services, Inc, which provided computer programming and consulting services, mainly for the desktop, in a language called Visual Basic.
During that same time, Johan starting learning about web and email servers, how to build them and program them, and began offering ecommerce web site hosting and other online services.
He later renamed the company to Designer Visuals, and continues to offer Internet Services under that name.
Johan's main interests with computers have always been to create software programs to generate computer graphics. He also enjoys using these programs to generate the visuals themselves.
As a hobby, Johan recently became involved in an area of computer graphics known as "Music Visualization", and created software which analyzes audio, such as music from a live band, and in turn generates intricate 2D and 3D graphics, which move in unison with the live music.
Screen captures from some of these graphics can be viewed by clicking HERE.
Videos from some of Johan's live performances can be viewed by clicking HERE.