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Randall Cole
Fuller Seminary
Director of Publications
I often tell people I grew up in a car. Between birth in Corpus Christi, Texas, and age 6, I lived in Memphis, Tallahassee, Chicago, Tacoma, Pittsburgh, and Pasadena. From 6 through 16 my family was in Sydney, Australia, and then I finally grew permanent roots back in Pasadena. Moving around has contributed to a wide scope of interests and probably played a role in my strong sense of independence.
I've never been quite sure what I wanted to do when I grew up--is it too late to decide? After enrolling in a small liberal arts college without a single design course I found myself being mentored by a very talented magazine art director. A few years later I was the art director. While I have sometimes been secretly jealous of those singularly focused individuals for whom design is an inseparable part of their identity, my strength as a designer flows more from the broad perspectives and interests reflective of my upbringing combined with sound conceptual skills.
Not being the product of a formal design education, and often working in relatively small and isolated studios, I have always found value in association interactions, conferences and seminars, but when I discovered UCDA in 2000, a few months after moving to work in higher education, I found an affinity group like no other I've experienced. The sense of camaraderie and shared experience is remarkable. No matter what a member is facing from organizational politics to budget pressures to fundraising and recruiting challenges to the day-to-day operational crisis, there's a whole group of peers that understand and are as close as the UCDA listserve.
Away from work my teenage daughter keeps my wife and I busy but I also love to read and am rarely more than an arms-length from at least one book. I appreciate the ability of fiction to create cultural and historical contexts that bring events and human stories to life and favorite authors include David Nevin (1812 is probably my all time favorite historical novel), Ken Follett (Pillars of the Earth), Frederick Forsyth, and Leon Uris. As a family we love foods from around the world and are blessed to live in a diverse cosmopolitan environment. In the kitchen we have been experimenting with Indian, Thai, and other asian cuisines while we try to figure out how to experience the foods and cultures in their original contexts.
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