If you are curious as to how Thomas was drawn to graphic design, you would only need to take a peek on his kitchen table when he was asleep at nine years old in his parent's home. His mother would rise early for work and leave notes with chores and details for the day. Then later, Thomas would leave his own illustrative notes for her when she came home and he would be out playing sports. His carefully crafted memos often used illustration and interpretive letterforms - a talent that continued through high school, informing fellow students of special activities with painted rally posters and large banners.

Thomas began in engineering at UC Davis with a certain reluctance, and then a year later, switched to arts with enthusiasm - studying under the country's foremost contemporary artists, including Wayne Thiebaud, William Wiley, Roland Peterson and Roy De Forest. In his spare time, he worked at the Student Union print shop, hand-cutting stencils and printing multi-color silkscreen posters for campus events. His collection was later purchased by the University to begin their "History of Poster Art on Campus" Archive.

Moving to the Bay Area with roommate Frank Carson, they both had a brief stay at California College of Arts and Crafts before they began their adventures working with local promoters designing rock posters and psychedelic graphics for SF publisher, Celestial Arts. Their "Kiss Me" poster hung on TV's Mod Squad Peggy Lipton's wall for a season. When Frank moved East to pursue a fine arts career, Thomas moved deeper into the area's counter-culture arts scene, working to launch the alternative print shop, JellyRoll Press with his new Digger family of friends. During this period, Thomas learned to prepare and print all of his own rock posters on large, offset printing presses. A cross-section of his rock posters is chronicled in the collector's edition book "The Art of Rock". Sometimes producing a poster a week, his work often featured multiple colored ink fountains, often with no two posters looking the same. Thomas' print experiences included setting machines up in the Mendocino forest for doing poetry books and an anti-war, underground shop in San Diego - all production experiences that helped shape a career of strategic and practical design work.

During this the same period, Thomas designed and printed the early manifestos to ecology and bioregionalism for Planet Drum, Earth First and the Ecology Center. His eighteen month involvement in the Indian Rights movement resulted in the design and publishing of their Indians of All Tribes Newsletters - eventually republished by Ten Speed Press. He continues today to contribute a good deal of pro-bono design and production work.

After JellyRoll Press was closed by fire, Thomas took a big step and opened his own design shop in downtown Berkeley - Sharpshooter Studios. Designing the space himself - the complete process camera, dark room, layout, drawing and production areas - all contributed to an ambiance of creativity remembered fondly by clients, friends and the many staff people he mentored. In the almost twenty years of Sharpshooter Studios, Thomas married, raised a daughter and son, and enjoyed award-winning successes, delivering rock-poster inspired, custom letterforms to the City's biggest agencies, and advertising and business collateral for his own clients - marketing consumer electronics, carpets, futons, pet aids and more.

Thomas began forecasting a troubling change in the demand and delivery for creative and production work with the emergence of computer technology, and closed his shop in 1990 to pursue consultation and a path of lower overhead. A two-year assignment with one of the earliest digital presentation companies pushed Thomas directly into the Macintosh platform, learning hands-on, all of the necessary programs to help jump-start the next phase of his career.

Thomas was recruited in 1992, to build an in-house creative department at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrision, a national law firm, challenged to deliver on-demand solutions under critical deadlines for their new marketing group. By his second year, Thomas had created and produced: over 60 different practice group brochures and articles; more than 45 Recruiting pieces; supported more than 100 Brobeck marketing events with direct mail materials, signage, and exhibit banners; created over 900 ads, developed streaming video productions and animated e-mails - saving the firm over a half million dollars. Firmwide Marketing Director David Geyer was quoted,
"During my 20 years in the advertising business I've had the opportunity to work with numerous fine art directors and graphic artists, and in terms of the quantity, quality and originality of his work, Thomas Morris definitely is the very best of class."

With the unpredictable failure of Brobeck in early 2002, Thomas has once again begun his own business - consulting and networking with old and new friends - to create the next chapter of his creative career. With a complete digital studio in his home office, Thomas Morris Design delivers creative solutions in every genre and media to clients around the country, combining the wisdom and expertise from years of study, creative exploration and professionalism with the freshness of new ideas, due-diligence and cutting edge technology.