I believe the artist, much like the human being, is the sum of their experiences. I learned from an early age the importance of communicating clearly. My neighborhood, much like my family, was comprised of immigrants. Shop window signs were often in one or more languages, some of which were not unusual to me even if I was not able to decipher what it said. The streets were filled with banners and neon and billboards and marquees with ads and graffiti filling the spaces between.
After high school, I not only left home, I left the continent. Once I left home, I did not find places I went particularly diverse; what I found were cultures and cities and people all of which I experienced as a foreigner. I became an outsider. Whether it was the Middle East or Central Europe, there were just as many billboards and magazines as there were back home. Despite the language being different the message was the same: a set of images and characters specifically designed to convey an idea or to sell something.
Coming to Graphic Design later in life, I bring a life rich in experience to my work. I love that Graphic Design can be both an enduring logo like that of GE or IBM around for generations or the ephemeral phenomena of a social media post lasting for a few hours. It’s all a matter of communication: billboards of North Beach to the storefront ads of Al Basara.
Much of my work, what I’m most proud of anyway, is more obviously centered around the idea of communication. It’s been principally magazine work, in short, layout. When I began working with Umbrella Factory Magazine it was as the fiction editor, as I do come from a writing background. But over the years my job there evolved to managing editor, editor in chief and later into design and layout. I’ve had the opportunity to work with writers and poets and photographers whose work I have procured into both quarterly magazines and single artist books and ebooks. I took this experience with me when I returned to school to pursue a degree in Graphic Design.
Producing a product, like a magazine, is a big endeavor. A magazine has a tremendous amount of content, much like the street scenes I knew as a kid, some things are familiar and some things are not. Again, it’s a matter of communication, what gets laid on a page for a reader to experience.
It’s also a matter of communication from conception to the press with all the people, writers, designers, artists and printers who are involved. It’s a great deal of communication for a product
that will ultimately end up on a quiet reader’s lap.
that will ultimately end up on a quiet reader’s lap.