Born in Los Angeles and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Jonathan Goldberg moved to San Francisco in 1995 after futzing around for a few years post high school. After five months of reckless irresponsibility in SF, he fled north in an attempt to get a job on an Alaskan fishing boat but instead bluffed his way into a job designing 1-900 number psychic advertisements at a Hari Krishna-owned telephone dating company in Seattle. After a few years there, his psychic supervisor invited him to work as a designer on an unlikely website project for Ericsson Mobile in Stockholm for the summer, after which he returned to bum around Richmond for a bit, and then lived with friends in Manhattan until the Stockholm money ran out. Now 1998, he moved back to Seattle and was hired by the alternative newsweekly, The Stranger, as an ad and editorial designer. Unfortunately, The Stranger only paid $8/hr, so after a few months working there and living at the YMCA, he returned home to Richmond. Jonathan quickly found work designing a monthly periodical called Punchline – then mostly syndicated comics and gag articles – which he helped morph into a Stranger-style alt-weekly as art director and co-owner. During the Punchline years, he began designing silkscreen gig and event posters under the moniker, 5Rock. The brutality of designing a 90-page magazine cover-to-cover, including upwards of 70% of the print ads every week, and as such not sleeping between the days of Tuesday and Wednesday preceding press deadlines for nearly three years while also often being paid in smiles, drove Jon into the slightly less demanding arms of advertising. He was soon hired as a graphic designer at The Martin Agency, where while working on the Saab, TV Land, and FMC accounts he realized he was now better suited to be an art director. In pursuit of more conceptual assignments, Jon moved from Martin to a modernist design / marketing firm called j h i good idea (bad idea) where he was a designer / art director until the 9/11 attacks crashed the economy and he was let go. It took a few years for things to pick back up again, and he eventually found freelance work as an art director at a small agency called Flashpoint and then a slightly less-small agency called Big River. In 2004, after a stint of stale assignments, Jon decided to move to Brooklyn. His first year he worked as an in-house art director for Time, Inc. corporate, and then picked up freelance art direction gigs at Hyperakt and Agent 16. In 2006, he was hired at BBDO as a senior art director on the digital side, where he made banner campaigns and branded content for FedEx, Pizza Hut, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, and Citibank. After a year at BBDO, he followed his boss and much of the BBDO digital team to Publicis NY, where he worked as a VP ACD on Cheerios, Beck’s, BMW, LG, Pillsbury, Fiber One, Yoplait, Reese’s Puffs Cereal for a little over four years. He spent the next two years as a freelance creative director at 360i, Modea, and The Burns Group NYC, where he led and won the creative pitch for the Chapstick account, and the very next day ( 2012 ) packed a Uhaul and moved back to Richmond with his wife and dog (he has a wife and dog now). The first year back in Richmond Jon spent driving back and forth to New York, living in a series of sad sublets and closets in order to run the Chapstick creative for The Burns Group, who for a long time had no idea he had even moved out of state. After the launch of the Chapstick work, Jon decided to start his own small agency in Richmond, which he called Shine Agency – until the woman that owns Shine Marketing, LLC threatened to sue him – at which point he changed the name to A For Adventure. Jon was the owner / president / creative director of A For Adventure, a design-obsessed advertising agency, or strategy-obsessed design agency, depending on the client. After an amazing six-year run launching emerging lifestyle and retail brands, Jon closed A For Adventure in 2019 to focus on freelance for brands on a national level, which he was able to do at agencies such as the Tombras Group, Solve, Our Man In Havana, Tierney, and Mono (who he believes stole his agency slogan, “simple, fun ideas always win”, which he, in turn, stole from his old boss, Patrick Clarke). As of 2020, Jon lives in Richmond again (the whole gang moved to Minneapolis for 2019 – don’t ask) with his wife, son (he has a son now), and dog. He spent 2020 spiffing up the aesthetics and brand strategy at Common House and joined Ogilvy for a minute in 2021 to re-flex his prowess in the big agency ad game. After getting that out of system, Jon freelanced for the likes of Jones Knowles Ritchie, Arts & Letters, Elevation, Tilt, and anyone who needed his brand of kooky thinking and design. In 2022, Jon rebuilt Dotted Line Agency’s brand and creative team as ECD, and as of 2023 he’s reopened / reinvigorated A For Adventure and is moonlighting at agencies – globally – so get in touch!