Why Artem Signum?  First, these are two Latin terms, (roughly) artem for art; and signum for sign. I have always been fascinated by art and my own (so I've been told) talent to produce or reproduce images. The word sign can have many meanings. A religious variation can refer to signs in scripture; e.g. "if this happens, what does it mean?" This type of sign has remained with me since my youth, along with my growing curiosity in Semiotics, the study of how we interpret signs. I have always loved logo and sign graphics and when I was very young, saw the relationships of graphic shapes on objects. One of my earliest appreciations was in transportation graphics; the goose on the rear uprights of the defunct airline North Central, and how the form of the aircraft (Douglas DC-9) mimicked that of the natural silhouette of the migrating bird, and vice versa. Or another example, the simple C-F logotype on tractor-trailers for Consolidated Freighters, Inc. trucking along with the many other truck liveries emblazoned with stripes wrapped around cabs. I filled pages of school notebooks with cabover trucks, race cars, jetliners, and favorite sport team apparel.
     I grew up surrounded by art and design, as my parents both collected art, took me to art openings, and furniture galleries at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. My dad was an architect, and exposed me to so many facets of architecture and design. I found the vernacular styles of post-modernism very exciting, because of the use of signs and references to history while still employing some Bauhaus modern materials and sensibilities. I love road trips and discovering exciting roadside venues, much like Venturi & Scott-Brown did in their, "Learning from Las Vegas" class and eventual textbook.  
I continue to play with all these elements and discover ways to combine, or encapsulate this into a new image and form.