Cerebral Ideas is based on an epiphany I had a couple of years ago. Nearly a decade ago, I started an advertising studio that did it all. After about 6 years, we had 5 employees, dozens of clients and impossible deadlines.

I had some of the best people in the Austin area working with me. An amazing illustrator that drew everything by hand, a systems level programmer that was a literal genius and a project director that had decades of experience in the industry. And of course, there was me and another designer.

Yes, we were expensive, but we had to charge to pay the overhead, the salaries and for my high level of stress. The problem was that we were getting priced out of the market. With the advent of downloadable "cracked" apps (stolen software), the industry was flooded with competition, and this lead to rock bottom pricing. Unfortunately, we didn't evolve with the times and ending up fossilizing into the age of old-school design firms.

Oh, about that epiphany. Well, a couple of years after I closed down that advertising studio, I got a couple of calls from some old clients of mine. They were complaining about the lack of integrity in the design industry. After I closed, they struggled to find the right balance of price and quality. I agreed to help them out, but since this time around it was just little old me, I had to figure out how I could efficiently complete their projects, but preserve the high quality for which I am known.

Then it hit me. Why not capitalize on the open source movement? I can use the solid, proven foundation of free web software out there, and then design a beautiful theme to provide the "wow!" factor. This proved to be the best of both worlds. I was able to provide the highest quality design with the highest quality web application, but didn't have to spend hours upon hours coding custom websites. On top of that, the customer was happy that they didn't have to spend thousands of dollars and could manage their own sites after some simple training.  

That is where the name came from: work smarter, not harder ... and Cerebral Ideas was born.