Tom Hapgood was plucked up from a small Army town in southern Arizona and plopped into the center of western Europe, just in time to witness the last gasps of the Cold War. In the spirit of a mutually beneficial cultural exchange, he made sure to bring along his red Ibanez Roadstar II guitar, and a blonde mullet that would only get longer and increasingly coveted by many. Previously, he had been raised in a battered, aluminum canoe on the Sudbury River in New England, followed by several years riding dirt bikes and tabletop arcade games in the shadow of Fort Huachuca, AZ. For five years in Karlsruhe, [West] Germany, he then scurried around ruined castles, head-banged through all-day heavy metal festivals and curated a personal collection of political party posters from the city walls downtown. He earned a degree in journalism from the University of Arizona and worked as a photojournalist. After two years of church mission work in central Italy, he worked at a bookstore and became a page layout designer at several large newspapers in Tucson and Southern Arizona, then going on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Communication from the University of Arizona. Since 2005, he and his wife and children moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he has been a professor of graphic design at the University of Arkansas, specializing in typography, brand identity and web development.