In 2007, Michael Shores started blog. It was wildly unsuccessful. The ultimate take away from the experience, though, was that he loved building the graphics and managing the code of the site. So he picked up all his stuff and moved to Sacramento to study graphic design at CSUS. Three years of design school whirled by, and he became a User Experience designer at CalPERS working on web projects to help state employees manage their retire benefits online. That gave way to working in the private sector as Creative Director of IDMLOCO, a web firm in Sacramento. Michael’s been freelancing full-time since 2015.