Tingum is a word for a thing whose name you can't quite place — something familiar but not yet named. That felt right.

Before Tingum, I spent years as a freelance graphic designer working with Esquire, Random House, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, and CNN — building visual identities for other people's stories. I understood brand, I understood craft, but what I was building was always someone else's.

Then in 2024, I sold 28 vintage shelves in a single day on Facebook. Not because of a campaign or a strategy — just word of mouth, and something people recognized immediately: warmth. Objects with memory in them.

I took that as a signal. I spent 2024–2025 teaching myself carpentry, turning my living room into a micro-workshop, and learning what it actually means to build something by hand. The design background didn't disappear — it just finally had somewhere physical to land.

Tingum is what came out of that.