Mark Eastman was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He took to art at an early age with an affinity for drawing, lettering and as a teenager, for photography, filmmaking and animation. After high school, he worked six years, full-time as a commercial sign painter and production artist for The Art Sign Company in Oakland. In 1998, partly inspired by early 20th century poster design, he attended California College of the Arts (formerly Califonia College of Arts and Crafts) in Oakland and San Francisco to study graphic design. He graduated in 1991 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design. During this time at CCA he also studied photography under Larry Sultan and Chris Johnson. From 1991-92 he was a member of the Typographic Staff at Adobe Systems, Inc., where he worked on digital typefaces including Monotype and Berthold type conversions produced under license with the original type foundries. He subsequently worked as graphic designer for Adobe's in-house marketing communications group. From 1994-2002 he worked on staff as an Associate Designer at Communication Arts magazine, a leading trade publication on graphic communications. While working at CA, he was actively involved in design, layout and picture editing of the publication. He designed and produced CA's advertising, direct mail and other CA printed promotional materials. He was also a contributing writer for the magazine and wrote numerous articles on typography, conferences and book reviews published in Communication Arts magazine and on their web site. He currently works on freelance basis for a variety of clients. Away from work he enjoys, art, film, jazz, the outdoors, travel and is a dedicated cyclist.