Joel grew up in Elgin, Illinois where his family owned a local lumber yard started by his grandfather, Harold. His sense of place is rooted in nature yet appreciates the importance of cultural influence urban environments  provide. Growing up 35 miles west of Chicago, Joel spent his youth running through cornfields and building tree forts in the woods. Family outings into the city would lay the aesthetic groundwork from early sightings of Midwest design icons such as Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ray & Charles Eames. Joel is a graduate of Pratt Institute (Class of '13) with a degree in Industrial Design focusing on a special aesthetic sensibility in form-making in addition to a well rounded knowledge of production methods and materials.