David H. Ford was born in Danville, Illinois, the original hometown of show-biz legends Gene Hackman and Dick and Jerry Van Dyke. However, his parents moved to rural Jacksonville, Illinois when he was six years old because they wanted to make an even more desolate life for him. In school, David excelled in his core subjects but took special interest in music, art and languages. Largely because it was easier to meet girls in those classes than in the FFA and shop classes that were so popular in the local curriculum.

He continued his education at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign—or "Bovine U" or "Soy Bean Tech" as it is sometimes known—where he again studied languages, virtually guaranteeing that he would not be qualified to hold down a paying job. Realizing that he would actually need to study something practical to make it in life, David upon graduation, immediately enrolled in grad school hoping to postpone the real world long enough to figure out what that practical thing might be. The exciting field of college bar band musician, while yet another way to get girls to talk to him, wasn't exactly setting him up for retirement. To make ends meet he took a job at a local recording studio where his band had recorded their demo CD's. Which, as fate would have it, also happened to be part of a full service multimedia outfit called Sinewave Studios. It was there that David saw real designers/developers in their natural habitat for the first time. After a short while, he realized that not only did his advanced computer skills give him a leg up on Sinewave's "tech-challenged" design team, but that Sinewave's clients repeatedly opted for David's concepts and design ideas. This was much to the chagrin of Sinewave's colorblind art director (yes, he literally was colorblind, no one knew until David argued with him for 15 minutes that a "yellow" he'd been using was not the same "green" the client had suggested). Anyway, it was during these moments that David realized his calling… to become a designer. Why had he not realized it before? His mother was an artist/designer, his sister had just finished her art degree and his great-grandmother was a painter. He had taken art and art history classes throughout school and Uni and enjoyed them immensely. He had also owned every kind of computer over the years and used them for everything including artwork starting with a commodore 64 in 1982. However, it wasn't meant to be at Sinewave, as the art director now had it in for David for "outing" him for being color blind. So David knew that if he wanted to indeed make a career in design it was going to have to be somewhere else. It was clear that if he stayed there, the politics at Sinewaves were going to keep him from reaching his full potential. He also realized something else... besides a semester and a few summers abroad, David had lived his whole life in Illinois. So it was not only time for an official career move but it was also time for a serious change of venue.

Throughout his travels and language studies David also made plenty of foreign friends or "fereigner's" as they're known in rural Illinois. So with that he called his ol' friend from a German exchange program, Dirk, who had coincidentally just taken a job in Munich. After hearing David's plight, Dirk offered David a room until he could figure out the rest. With laptop and backpack in tow, David left for Munich. Upon arrival, he enrolled in night classes at a media arts/design academy and got a job right away doing web design. It wasn't hard in those days as it was still the tech boom and everyone needed designers and people to do web development. It also didn't hurt that David spoke the 3 most important languages in the EU fluently. Somehow, all that time spent in the language lab was actually paying off in some weird roundabout way.

After 5 years working for several ad and PR firms, David had come a long way. However, during this time the German economy had nearly ground to a halt. So David decided to come to the land of opportunity, the United States of America. He wanted to see if what he had heard about this great country was true. After some minor misunderstandings going through customs, David and his new fiancee Nicki (from Waterford, Ireland) were ready to come in and steal some jobs from the "cocky yanks" as they are affectionately referred to in Europe. That was 5+ years ago.

These days, Dave and his wife split their time between NC and the Old World. There, he authors web sites, designs for print, plays music, and does the occasional French or German tutoring session. From time to time, he can also be spotted wearing his "No, I won't fix your computer" t-shirt down at Wrightsville Beach.