Until my junior year in college, I hadn’t given much thought to it. While I blame my own ego for hesitating to question my design preferences, I also blame my education. At an all-boys, private Catholic high school in Florida, I learned that a strong man doesn’t express his feelings through his artwork. And at an elite private liberal arts school in Connecticut, I learned that a white cisgender man who attended a private prep school has a hard time making art that people care about. Both experiences have left me assuming that my graphic design style must be a rational preference rather than a personal expression, and that I’m not an artist at all. I’ve adopted the “designer” title since then. I still think it feels more accurate.
Nevertheless, I think my life experiences and my design choices are more connected than I had initially presumed, if not causationally, then at least correlationally. I was a different person in high school. I wore bright pastels, I wore boat shoes, I had a crew cut, I listened to Gospel, I ate burgers, I played soccer, I was an altar boy, and I had a girlfriend.
Likewise, my work in high school represents a different point in my design journey. I spent a good chunk of my free time writing bible verses in Gothic calligraphy, an antiquated and admittedly elitist style of lettering where decoration, maximalism, and an infamous illegibility take precedence. I wrote with gold leaf, precious inks, and archival paper, all expensive yet absolutely inessential and impractical materials for handwriting. Calligraphy and the Catholic Church have gone hand-in-hand for centuries, which gave me a lot of opportunities to apply my design eye: wedding cards, Chapel artwork (see Luke’s Gospel Calligram) and Mass sheets, for instance. Did I love painstakingly writing calligraphy by hand? Not really. But did I love earning respect from my Church and school for my artwork? Absolutely.
To know me is to know that I’ve changed since then. My wardrobe of pastel polos has reduced itself to a stack of plain black tees. My crew cut grew to a length any boys’ school dress code would condemn. I’m vegetarian, I’m no longer Catholic, I listen to hard music, I swear pretty often, and I’m a grade-A homo.
With these changes, my design tastes and practice changed too. I gave up calligraphy for versatile, legible typography. I work primarily digitally, not on paper (see Jeffrey Gibson Projections). I don’t work for the Church anymore, and I try to ensure that every element of my work is absolutely essential to convey the information it intends.
But if my lifestyle and design choices are merely correlated, the question of this statement remains: why do I design how I do now? I’ve done some soul searching to try to find an answer, and I think I’ve got one. Though I lament the frequency with which artists advertise themselves according to their backgrounds rather than their work, I think the foremost influence on my work has been my sexuality, or at least how it’s changed the last four years of my life.
I came to my senses during my junior year, when my high school found out I was gay and dealt accordingly. If you think about it, phrases like “discipleship retreats” or “conversion therapy” themselves are decorated terms. Because they’re neither retreats nor therapy; those suffixes are there to make “sexuality alteration” sound less aggressive. I don’t think it takes a genius to deduce that my experience there was painful. Yet I think it was this pain that forced me to question whether the ornamented religious institution for which I designed calligraphy deserved its glamor. When you’re told that you’re going to hell, or that you spoil society, or that you should not exist, all the pomp and circumstance doesn’t seem so sincere.
It hurts to know that the beautiful, gilded, allegedly inclusive organization in which I was raised was so spiteful beneath the layers of gold and ink. Yet my experience has become a parable for my current design practice. I recognize that embellishing a corrupt institution, or an underdeveloped idea, or an ambiguous message with pretty shapes or big words or complex colors is disingenuous. To me, the most effective designs are the ones where a clear, genuine message –– not any superfluous distraction –– takes precedence. Rationality aside, I continue to associate the Church with decorative design, and decorative design with the superficiality I discovered in high school. I take pride in my distance from Catholicism, and, by extension, my aversion to decoration.
When I pick up a calligraphy pen, or walk into a Church, or fly home to Florida for the holidays, I inevitably feel sad. I remember the deceptive, embellished organization to which I dedicated so much of my time in high school. Similarly, when I view intricate, unclear, ambiguous designs from individuals claiming to support equity and inclusivity, I feel deceived. I think these feelings inspire my appreciation for minimalism and prompt me to strive for simplicity. I firmly believe that an unambiguous message is an accessible one, and that a minimalist design often allows that message to shine. In any case, I refuse to play the victim, complaining about the challenges my identity has brought me through my work. I’d like to think my practice is about more than who I am, or where I come from, or where I want to stick my private parts.
My love for letterforms has not dwindled since I left for college. But my approach to them has changed significantly. In a way, practicing simplistic design has become a new form of therapy for me. With each character, I feel like I’m undoing the disingenuous, decorated elements of my past. That makes me happy.
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