Jhan Valadao is a student at the Napa College, finishing the Digital design and Graphic Technology program in summer of 2012.

Raised in Cape Town, South Africa. Jhan Valadao began traveling straight after school. Working and living throughout Europe. After working for 4 years in the service industry in London, Jhan found himself employed on super yachts in the Mediterranean. In charge mostly in the up keep of the yachts appearance, the basic design aspects that may make the yacht look beautiful but perhaps not functional became more and more obvious.

After free lancing for yacht repair and standard up keep for 3 years, Jhan discovered a passion for design. “Lots of yachts have features that make then look great from the quays, but when you up there on the mast with nothing but 1 lousy harness securing you to the yacht and about 50ft up, things like functionality seem to be far more important to you than how pretty the yacht is.”

The problem with trying to explain what safety features you would have employed if you designed some of the yacht, is that you need to be able to put what’s in your head on some form of paper or media. This is when Jhan Valadao decided to go back to school and start learning about design. Jhan’s strong suits are Adobe Photoshop and After Effects with capable abilities in Autodesk Inventor and 3ds Max.