Requisite Sparky Bio Page

I'm Sparky, generally known as Dan Rhatigan, and I run this joint. There's plenty to be discovered about me if you just look around, but here are a few assorted details to enhance your understanding of who I may or may not be:

• I am a type designer/graphic designer living in Reading, England.
• I was born in 1970 in scenic Staten Island, the unglamorous, semi-suburbany part of New York City. I grew up the youngest of six kids, and I have 25 first cousins. Can you tell we're Irish Catholic?
• I'm a native New Yorker, but I've never actually lived in Manhattan, just gone to high school and then much later worked there. I've lived pretty much all my adult life in Boston and Brooklyn, with a coupe of years in Queens thrown in for good measure. At the moment, I live in the United Kingdom...
• ...where I recently finished the MA Typeface Design program at the University of Reading (see pictures). I loved the hell out of it, and believe I may have finally figured out what I should have been doing with myself all these years.
• My past academic escapades have included 12 years of Catholic school, a BFA magna cum laude in graphic design from B.U. (and I'll be the first to admit that I used the demands of an art program as an excuse to shirk more serious academic interests I might have pursued in another life), two cracks at a master's degree in design (a year at B.U. and a year at Pratt Institute, neither of which challenged me the way I'd hoped), and a couple of years teaching design and typography courses at the City College of New York.
• You can look at some of my design work and history here. If you're just here cruising, or being a voyeuristic lurker, then you may as well just cut to the chase and tell me. I can probably use the ego boost.
• And I'm a big ol' 'mo, in case you're wondering how to tailor those flirtatious remarks.

• I am a rather wee fellow, standing a mere 5'7 and wearing a modest size 8 shoe. I wear small shirts and 30" x 30" pants ("trousers," for all you foreigners who are giggling right now) in case you want to send me presents. (Or you can just send me tokens of appreciation from here.)
• At some point during my late twenties, I was infected with HIV. I don't exactly know how, but it goes without saying that I regret all the times that I thought I was acting safely enough, instead of making sure I was being 100% safe. It's a stinky burden to carry around. I'm very lucky, though, that I am in excellent health and I have the resources at my disposal to stay that way. So far I'm also loving the hell out of socialized medicine here in the U.K.
• There's more to me than you'll ever see revealed on this website. Never forget that.