About Me

Hi! I’m Ben Byrne. My pronouns are he/him.

I was born and raised in Edina, Minnesota, then attended college at Iowa State University, where I graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design with Honors (that means I was in the honors program) and with Distinction (which means my GPA was good). Then I went to grad school in Illinois. I dropped out of that program and moved to western Massachusetts for five years, where I was one of the first staff members at Free Press. I designed the organization’s logo, did various brochures, annual reports, and conference materials, and a variety of other stuff for about five years. During that phase of my life I also was a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (you can find my appearance on YouTube if you feel a need to see it).

After that, I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I lived for about five years and started working remotely — first as a freelancer, then at a place called Firefly Partners, then for a company called New Signature.

In 2012, I co-founded Cornershop Creative with two good friends/colleagues. Since co-founding Cornershop we’ve grown from that initial team of three to about a team of thirty. While there I’ve had a lot of different responsibilities, but mostly I’ve been a designer/developer unicorn, planning, designing and implementing websites for various nonprofit organizations. Before COVID, I also did a fair amount of public speaking at various conferences, but that’s largely stopped now.

Since founding Cornershop, I’ve moved to Richmond, Indiana and then Santa Rosa, California, where I’m hopefully going to stay.

I’ve got two awesome kids and two dogs, both poodle mixes. In what spare time I have that isn’t devoted to unwinding in front of the TV, I enjoy hiking, photography, kayaking, and some other stuff.

I have not dated identical twins, nor am I a drummer — there are apparently other Ben Byrnes who fall into those categories.