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Innerview: Ercan Ucer / Grafik Tasarim (Turkey)

October 2008

Image: NA / Grafik Tasarim Dergisi

Note: Take #1 of a design magazine interview.

01) How do you name yourself other than being a versatile designer? Labels aren’t my liking, but they can’t help but be used. Things are what they are. The past year and half I’ve come to the realization that I’m not really a graphic designer. Well, I am, but not in conventional ways or to today’s standards. I find myself every day becoming more and more out of touch with things. I’ve always had the knack for carrying my own cocoon with me, but some days it’s very apparent that I’m enclosed. That aside, anymore I just say that I’m a maker of things, as I like to just make things. I think I confuse a lot of people, actually I know I do. I’ve had people email me confused if my web site is an archive for many artisans’ work. Some think that there is a D, a J and a G teaming up in my basement. One girl asked if I did any actually DJ-ing. Which, I gladly agreed with. I’ve had clients get a little disappointed by what I make for them because it’s not what they wanted, even though they told me from the initial phone call or email, “I like everything that you do. Do whatever you want.” I simply like to make things and hope to dab a bit into many things by the time my time is up. I do know that every day is a new adventure at my soupy head and dining table. I’m calling a portion of my problem, well not really a problem for me but it might be to others and so be it, the “Batman Boyhood Concern”. When I was younger I simply made things. When I was younger I was obsessed with Tim Burton’s take on “Batman”. And I still find it to be my most engaging. I wanted everything in my room to be “Batman” related and if we couldn’t afford the room make-over, I’d just have to take matters into my own hands. My Grandparents lived just a four minute, little-legged sprint down the sidewalk from the school house in the small town I was associated with. Nearing 3:30 PM about three out of five school days, I’d hit the screen door running, grab a sugar cookie and get to work on my life-sized detail drawing of actor Michael Keaton as Batman. My Grandma kept this ode to pop-culture and my life in her bottom dresser drawer next to a giant pile of drawings from a giant pile of grandkids that she had collected over the years. I’d shut myself in her bedroom, drawing my way into a little portion of my master work until “Supper” wrapped it’s way around the kitchen corner, calling down the hallway. Drawing utensils were then exchanged for eating ones and the paper was rolled back up until I’d hit the front door again the next time. Something in me just said to draw it, to do it. Something before even this particular episode or movie was in me saying for me to do and make things. And I just enjoyed it. I found a peace to documenting things and sometimes I’d tag team with my older brother and we’d feed off of our energy to draw and make things. We’d tailor many creative moments after late nights watching movies or attending a wide range of events like fairs, tractor pulls and visiting cities. For the record I believe the “Batman” project went unfinished, but in some extension I’m still making things in this formative format, along with feeding off of other events in my life, past and present. Sadly, when my Grandma had to finally sell her home and contents, I wasn’t there the day the trash was hauled off with that over-sized, unfinished treasure map to my late ’80s world in-tact. In some ways maybe it is better off that it lives as a memory, though I’m sure I’d proudly display it if I had it today. And in some ways I hope that somebody plucked that thing up out of a trash heap somewhere to hang on their wall, to either celebrate another’s dream or as inspiration for their own. I know I’d do the same if I found someone’s life work, even if it was only drawn in a season and only for the sake of making something. I can see that a lot of talent is emerging right now from my generation (mid-20s/30s). In a sense we’re coming out of our bedroom closets to share with others what we can do. We’ve got a firm grasp on our ancestors’ aesthetics and fuse it with a brimming-over upbringing pile of video tapes, video games, computers and pinches of rebellion and rock ‘n’ roll and whatever environment we come from or have access to (at least from my perspective). I suppose the versatile designer isn’t a new thing, as I’m now thinking of some of my favorite and influential master designers of yesterday. But the combination of yesterday’s and today’s technology plays a role in the creative implants of the current versatile designer. I think you’ll find that a lot of people are just up and making a wide-range of things, not because they have to but because they simply can. Everybody seems to be versatile, and many are extremely good at it. Many artist/designer web sites are a file cabinet for all things, all ideas and information (I know that mine is that way, or I’d like to think it is or will be some day). I always say that you can throw a rock and hit somebody who is involved in the arts. And that’s not a bad thing, but it’s this is interesting to me and I think it’s due to the internet and technology. There are a lot of people making things or tying to. It’s good and bad that we’re all kids again? I think I’ll always be a man-child to some degree, but I have to plug into the adult world. Opposed to being versatile, there are a few one-hit-wonders, or stylists that can pull off their own thumb prints with each piece over and over and over, assembly-line like. Personally, I get a bit blahed by this and like I say a few can only pull it off for a career of the “same something to say”. I always think of one of my favorite illustrators, Edward Gorey, when I think about a style that sticks and is truly of the originator. He had his influences and his loves, but he also spun his own world and I don’t think his world caan ever be truly duplicated. 02) What is the relationship between marketing and your designing process at different areas? (poster, packaging, logo…etc) Until recently I’ve never had to market myself in conventional practice. For six solid years I cut my cloth diapers full on independent music-related designs that involved posters, logos, illustrations, etc. Being plugged-in to a small market like Kansas City, MO as a maker of things, and early-on living with a band who knew other bands and so forth, it was easy for me to crank out quite a quantity of work and a wide selection. Still, I’ve always just barely dipped into the arts scene here. My first few years of my design odyssey, there was no shortage of people to form relationships with and most of these people needed things made for their band or whatever. Not to mention I was in my early 20s which amounted for a large amount of energy and excitement. It also got to the point where I didn’t need to be told to make something. I’d just up and do it. Granted, I haven’t made much money at all doing what it is I do (this is something I knew from the get-go) and there have been some frustrating times, but the rewards have been greater and most all of my initial goals and curiosities have been met, several times over. And look at me, I’m making it in Turkey! Anyway, mostly what I’ve fit into is “Trickle Down”, or “Word-of-Mouth”. On top of creating my first five or more years, which was squandered into the late night / wee morning or on weekends, I was working 40 hours a week (oh, still am) at day jobs. I was a janitor and grounds keeper for many years and currently I do data entry in an office and have a better schedule and sleeping pattern. For a season or two I was even working 60 hours a week to make ends meet, plus a full-time girlfriend (now my wife) and working all night to meet design deadlines (thankfully independent music industry deadlines can be very relaxed and since I don’t get much money, I can pretty much make my own deadlines). I was at times scrambling between 10-to-15 projects at once, and only to basically be paid in cheeseburgers. Certainly, the ultimate goal and position for me is to someday make a clean getaway from the day jobs. I will still dabble in music-related practices, but I’m finding new avenues and realizing the powerful and simple marketing tool that the internet has to offer. Although I butt heads with computers and technology, I’ve learned to just be myself when representing myself. But, my biggest “butt” will be with myself. I can never do enough and I’m so very hungry. 03) Can you tell us about your working environment and your different feelings or extraordinary events that inspires you? Ever since I was a child, my working environment has been in my bedroom hunched over at my bed or whatever work station of the week I’ve built. I could always be found drawing or building something, or putting culture into my system. Though, my working environment extended beyond the bedroom as I grew up a child of rural farm and country life in the middle of America. I made dives into the sandbox, the fields, creeks and woods. I certainly believe in a home base of operations, mostly a place to find peace through the pieces, store my treasures and to unload my skull cap. And I’ve claimed to friends before how I could easily stay alone for weeks or months on end. I don’t get bored and lonely. Like my childhood on the farm, I still see everywhere on the outside as my working environment as well because I do my most thorough thinking / observing while out of my clubhouse comfort zone. Don’t most all who dive into any area of the arts and crafts? Given my odd schedule, I also must spin wheels rather quickly. So, I suppose the clubhouse external is the feeding and processing ground until I get the moment’s time to get it out of my system while at my desk down in my basement clubhouse. And I need this. It’s my cure, though it can be my downfall. I’m a major fan of extraordinary events and tend to find humorous and peculiar ones to be more my taste, and more-so in retrospect of the event. I’m a fairly anxious guy, so inspiration usually comes after my own post-dramatic stress of a situation. I feel to be blessed with a certain quality that attracts odd circumstances, or maybe it’s just in over-kill-over-my-head. Extraordinary has its own brand of fast pitch. More often I find inspiration in places, events and things that are fairly run-of-the-mill and every day ordinary for any person, which can give them an added cushion of “extra” for me. Some of my very favorite designs are remnants of everyday people, places and things. I do a lot of looking down or glancing off into space, collecting while I’m out and about either mental delights or physical ones that have been discarded. Since I was young I’ve had a habit (good or bad?) of bringing things home. While most men bring booze, golf clubs, sports cars, tools, even ladies home…I started dragging pieces of the farm to my world under the bed. I believe this started with bugs and the only type of spider I find comfort in, known to me as the Granddaddy Long Leg. When I found out that these long-legged, tiny had wonders would pass away of suffocation and frost bite after rounding them up in a glass jar kept in the freezer, I started dragging pre-dead things home to spare me some emotion. Not too unlike the family farm dog, I’d drag animal carcasses, parts and pieces to my bedroom. I was a gatherer before I was a hunter. Though, part of this was instilled in my boots while on excursions with my father to hunt animals like quail, rabbit, squirrel, turkey and deer. My Dad would let me keep things like turkey beards, feathers and feet. He himself had an impressive collection of deer antlers. When I was 6 or 7 my grandmother made me a denim backpack lined with plastic to collect the day’s dead things in. My Dad would shoot something and toss it into my backpack. Once home we’d dump it out to field dress our dinner and wipe out the lining for the next hunting trip. Mom and Dad have a couple picture books filled with the conquests of kills. They also serve nicely as a chart for watching four children grow-up as they jot the front lawn or pick-up truck bed landscape in front of my Dad’s kills, with big eyes, grins and sometimes a tongue hanging out in mimic of a dead deer’s. Further-on the photographs reveal the children as stars to their own still scenes with their own bagged game. A future goal of mine is to have an exhibition of blown-up family photography of this genre. To some this may be quite strange or extraordinary, but it’s not unusual for me at all and nothing out of the ordinary in response to the environment I grew up in. It’s only one tier of the cake. I’ve had many events in my life stick-out (check the “history” on my web site), but a singular extraordinary event that sticks out in a way in which it triggered me happened when I was six years old. I was at the school playground during Kindergarten recess. All alone I sat on top of a tall slide and watched the rest of the class playing games together, rummaging through the playground’s wood chip obstacles and tennis court tag playing. They were all going and doing and jumping and seemed to be enjoying themselves, but it just didn’t feel right to me. The playground sat directly next to a well-traveled road and it too was buzzing behind me with cars, trucks and tractors housing people on the go. Even though I made my own decision to do my own thing, sitting atop that slide, I felt extremely alone, confused and secured inside a most intense sadness of insecurity and strangeness to this scene, to the extended world I was coming up into. I can still feel a connection to this moment and I’ve had two or three other episodes like it, but not nearly as bad. Jokingly, I’ve maybe spent three of my nine lives during these moments. But, the one thing I can’t precisely channel, looking back up that slide, is what exactly happened after my observational anti-social breakdown. I do know that I blacked-out, fell from the top of the slide and hit my head really hard on the ground. The next thing I remember was sitting in the back of my parent’s car, smiling at the blue sky and excited to leave school early. Something important announced itself that sunny day. I wouldn’t exchange my early observations, inputs, memories and moments for anything, even the things I did this morning I wouldn’t trade. It has all compounded and fueled me in a way to how I got to the right now. When that can be channeled and floated on, then the moves you make can be pre-calculated and form purity to them. Notes like that aren’t always hit perfectly, and sometimes you’ve got to miss and even collapse to the floor. But, when the notes are on, you can really feel it. 04) When did you discover the impulse that led you being a designer? This impulse to create, to leave behind a paper trail of some sort on my impression, has always been kicking around in me. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t doing or making something. Even now, creeping on 30 I’m finding that I’m more in touch with my former self than my current, chipping away at something. Actually, the former and current are the same person. I’m not really living in my past, but I’m moving forward with it fully there and in use. Which, is another calculation of how all things gathered and hunted in one’s life can lead to the now, I suppose? Though, I don’t mean to randomly aim arrows. From a young age I was dealing with design (as all of us “designers” did and do), but at the time didn’t really make a proper connection to it. I knew how to spot Beatles records by their green apples. I was a fan of the “Star Wars” logo type and knew it was its own calling card and mega cool. I was very respectful of my nation’s flag and very curious of how one got his picture on money…and many other things that we all find developmental comfort or relation in. And while growing up on a farm I became quickly associated with tractor machinery identities and seed corn logos. With my older brother I’d collaborate on mini magazines and we also would cut and clip exciting words and phrases out of Mom’s magazines and paste them down. I always chose to “Visualize” my book reports in school rather than “Verbalize” them. I must confess there was many times where I wouldn’t even read the book and still score a top honor with my interpretive illustrations based on my own guts and thoughts. Which, sometimes a designer doesn’t have time to read a whole book before slapping a cover to it. When the age of 9 or 10 came around I was the winner of a wide-spread logo competition for a roller skating / bowling alley business in a nearby town. I had a hunch I’d win as every other submission, even those by students 8 years older than me, didn’t feel inspired or realized or even logo-like (whatever that means nearly 20 years later). I still like my logo. Though, when my family drove by the facility after the sign was finally up, I got a real-world shock of disappointment as the owners had took the liberty to butcher my design and it just wasn’t the same. It was ruined to me. It was my first design disaster and it hurt at the age of 9 or 10, just like they hurt now. I was also a big fan of collecting and mimicking logos and mascots for collegiate and professional sports teams. There was a time when I claimed, “I want to be one of those people that makes those sports logos.” Not really knowing what people who made such things are called, but I knew that I wanted to be involved somehow and I knew how to make sense of them (I also celebrated a go at trying to design athletic shoes). My love for those sports logos moved into sports stadium design and architecture while I was in my early teens. I still have pages and pages of baseball stadium designs I’ve invented. However, a poor track record in mathematics finally convinced me at 18 that I probably couldn’t make the cut in such a technical field as architecture without being held accountable for faulty engineering. It was a hard reality, though I eventually would work as a night janitor for a successful stadium design office when I first moved to Kansas City, MO. So, technically I did work in sports architecture. The summer previous to my non-math skills realization, I was involved with a wide-selection of fellow high school artists to form the first annual Missouri Fine Arts Academy. This opened me up to other channels for future development with the arts. And I became more open and dare-I-say, evident of my ability for “artsy”? I also was becoming influenced by new things like typography of graffiti (even though I only practiced graffiti in sketch books and had no idea what typography was until two years later). The last year of high school I decided to go to college for something called graphic design. I enjoyed art and making things, but from what I understood graphic designers guaranteed “more chunky of a pay check”, something I’m still looking for. It wasn’t until receiving a great helping of design education at Southwest Missouri State University (SMSU, which is now Missouri State University), that it really began to seep in what a graphic designer was defined as. The illustration and design department at SMSU was a unique opportunity to study with as my instructors were from Eastern Europe and Russia. This brought a great perspective on not only the largely hands-on work that I was interested in pursuing but also from a cultural platform. Most importantly, I learned how to build and burn from the fuel that I once had while making things in my bedroom as a child. This took over two years of redevelopment, oiling and eye opening to get at what I had in me from the foundation get-go. My instructors helped me to see this, along with a lot of hard work. Though, looking back I don’t think I really worked hard enough. At times, it wasn’t an easy transition and at times I was laughed at by peers. One such instance early-on in my studies was when I said, “I’m going to take the graphic design route that doesn’t involved computers.” It wasn’t arrogance speaking, rather backwoods boy. A couple of friends thought I was crazy for that one. Later on those same friends would look at me very strange when I thought that typography class involved map making. After many paints of red face, and once knee-deep into my studies, I had second thoughts about graphic design as I fought with the screen barrier of the computer monitor, the route I didn’t want to take. Computers choked the fun out of creating for me. Frustration was sensed from within and out as I was at a loss with my once creative love and my first computer design instructor was pretty frustrated with me. Along with this struggle, I visited many professional design studios and always came back very unsatisfied with the “profession” I was getting into. It lacked what I was searching for, the thing that kept me up as a child making stuff. A professional design office atmosphere might work for most, and that is perfectly fine, but I for one wasn’t about to give myself to another man’s dream, spending 40 years pushing around on an assembly line screen. I’m painting a terrible picture for professional design offices and I apologize. I just didn’t see myself and the way in which I thought and worked in that environment. I knew what I wanted to do, but had no idea what to do with it. And I for sure knew it wasn’t going to be wasted on computer monitors (Note: I own a computer and use it. It is a remarkable tool and has been a good/bad addition to the industry. But, a computer is not design nor does it have a magic button that pukes out designs like people back home have once thought). Sheepishly, I took a chance on myself the last couple years of school and gained much needed confidence in doubling up design with illustration classes and learning to merge the two. It was a lot of work (even though I don’t think I worked hard enough), but something clicked and I felt like something could come of it. Outside of class I was catching fever as well, starting what would become my own business and shuffling a large amount of clients. This was when I started getting into independent music graphics, merging my love of music with my love for making things, and meeting people who needed me to make them things. The last couple of years of school were very important. I learned to reconnect with myself, to poor into my work to where it became more than just “work”. I would then finish up the rest of my design and illustration courses and secretly drop-out of school to pursue a higher calling to do my own thing. 05) Is looking at life always from a different angel, the designer’s necessarily ego? Most any area of most any job / skill / talent / business doesn’t come without some ego hurdling. The ego is amped further within the arts. Inflated achievement comes with ease when your voice gets a little loud in a “scene” or beyond, when you start to make some ground or just think you’ve got it going on. It’s easy to become your own Hallmark moment. I’d like to think I’m fairly grounded, but it’s hard not to feel the eggs weight the other side when I know I could be sitting on a couple of golden ones. And everybody asks me why I’m not doing this full-time, why I don’t have my own book, why this and that. Working a day job can help matters upstairs and can also add a unique fuel to the equation, but it can also be a nightmare pushing everything to the back burner because of a day job. It can hard to keep up with everything. But, life is life and I’m best when I don’t try to push it so hard that I end up breaking instead of making. I have to just tell myself that I am a man and a man who happens to make things. Even if those things are on the side, and at times have to stay on the inside. It doesn’t mean that I’m better than somebody nor am a “somebody” because I’ve found a certain something within me or a way to leave my mark. I enjoy my life, have fun and feel very fortunate, even if I do find it all quite silly or serious from time to time. I think one needs healthy doses of reality and a whole heap of humor to make it. Besides, I have no answers. If you know somebody with it all figured out, have them call me. Phones tend to bring the egos out, but I’ll at least give an ear. What helps me is to find comfort and ease in venturing back into my child manner. I find peace in just Be-ing, but not in some freak-out way. I’m much more content and find peace when I’m either looking at the world through a certain lense that I might qualify for or just making and enjoying the act of celebration in creativity. The moment I start to think too much about it all or start to answer questions for interviews is when it can get a little dangerous. I feel odd for the people who sit through an entire interview with me because half the time I have no idea what the heck is going on. Creative voice can be a dangerous stomping ground. We see individuals all the time start to play God with their arts and crafts to where they become the work of art. They say it’s “who you know”, not “what you know” and this may be true in some fashion, but I think people play with their gifts a little too hard to become something other than a someone, to where they don’t even recognize themselves. It’s a place where the art takes possession over them and the things and even the people that they pioneer. It’s sad. And another thing, it’s sad to me when creative people resort to outside influences to fuel themselves. This is another topical can of worms, but I get extremely sad, frustrated and the feeling of cheat when I find a great piece of art was created under the guise of chemical enhancement and or power pills. I don’t think I’ve ever had a creative supply shortage. Even if I had the full-time employment of my own craft, I’d still have a back list added to daily as there isn’t enough time and resources to accomplish everything I want to and I don’t have a lack of work ethic or passion (though sometimes I might think I’m lazy). It’s evident that those who are steeped with some intuition to create and spew out what they’ve got in them have been blessed and cursed in some way. I feel very blessed to have this ability of self-contained entertainment and amusement and the strange need to put my stamp down here. Though, it can be a wreck when I stay too deep within myself. It’s hard to find balance sometimes, but if I just take things one step at a time, I’m fine. I think gaining wisdom through maturity helps and I know that my energy and will-power have died some and of late because I’m getting older. But, I’m leaning on this as a beneficial tragedy and it excites to want to always be making my best work. I think I say and do some dumb stuff now, but I’m positive it’s less than yesterday. 06) Can you inform us about graphic design’ s one of the important field, package design and your sketches? / Tell me about the sketching and process of packaging. There is a certain amount of image longevity that becomes attached to packaging. I’m not experienced in much more than musical CD packaging, but I think a long life span especially applies to this in the iconic halls of pop-culture. Certainly, my little kicks aren’t associated with the big boy playground pop-culture world at all, as I’ve only floated around the local independent music scene and a few magazines and books. Though, who knows as time passes and perhaps within the very small circle I’ve operated in, it will tell. Besides, it’s not the reason to make something and/or package something (to win awards and hearts or to make something cool-lookin’) but if you can add some meaty eye candy, then so be it and why not? I love poster design because there are endless possibilities to exhaust, many ways to work reach-and-grab, to be of-the-moment and intuitive. If something doesn’t work all-around, it’s throw-away and will die soon like house flies. CDs are so different, at least for me, and they can be quite intimidating and sometimes a nightmare. I do a little bit of sketching, but more-so the process and evolution of diving right into the CD package is the sketching for me. If I’m rewarded with an ample amount of time to work on a CD I usually make it happen in three different sessions, or what I call “incubation stages”. This allows me time to sit on ideas and to come back to them with fresh perspective and clear head, to play or spin off ideas and such. With the way in which I work, I tend to feed off of my day-to-day (sometimes minute-to-minute) emotional handy work. It can be a little strange though as I say I don’t like to think, but I’m no stranger to it and thus I can easily obsess over wondering the what-might-have-been with something like a CD package or anything after it’s over. There have been moments where having an extended deadline for a package can cause too much to happen, too many sessions. And I’ve had some CD packages that the musicans/band have taken anywhere from six months to two years upon getting to the final. You know, people taking their time, finishing up recording, life stuff and production blahs. These typically turn to nightmare with the band or a third party (another designer or the printer) ending up with passed around digital files, putting the project on the mutated chopping block. CDs can wear me out. Especially in the age of digital and “everybody’s a designer”. That’s another ball park though. Though I appreciate not cramping my time and style, as I’m a busy boy, I do believe my best packages have come down on me at the last minute, and usually on the lowest of budgets. And I mean cheap, major cheap. Sometimes I only need one session to cram for the final. There have been times where a client tells say, “Hey, I’ve got such ‘n’ such idea to release a CD.”, and instantly I’ll have the image in my head and make it and it’s perfect. I guess it just depends? 07) What are the benefits of making global designs for the designer? I love a body of work, one that breathes and not only serves as a timeline for the maker, but also for views and observations on life itself. I like the idea of the paper trail through the woods. Even if it goes barely used or undiscovered in its own time, it still becomes a piece of time. Who knows, maybe it will be a major highway further down? Of course anyone who makes things in a passionate format and routine can’t help but be a tad bit selfish when it comes to dishing something up. Even if it is for some other body, it is always from an original body, the creator. Anything that goes global is still connected to that first breath of singular life. It means a great deal to me when something silly that I get tickled out of bringing to life, in some aspect, makes it out of the nest and causes others to react in their own way, mostly positively and even sometimes negatively. In today’s fast-paced world of millions and billions of images and things flashing, it really does mean a lot that my meager things have made it in some strange and oddball small-scale way. Even, if it’s just a grin or a double-scoop by someone of a little poster on a wall or in a magazine or out there on the internet billboard. After starting to make things on my so-called professional design odyssey for only a few months, I had people track me down to say how their bedroom walls had few places to hang anymore of my work. This just floored me as I am not one to have much bare space on my own walls of other people’s work. 08) Can you explain the relationship between marketing and designing? Like I previously mentioned, years of marketing for me came by word-of-mouth or by people seeing my work in the community or in magazine competitions and book publishing. Something I tell artists and designers is to get the work out there. Even if it’s something you’re doing in the off hours, just get it out. I know that I have some things that only I and my basement will see, but a lot of what I make gets out there. And if the people find something to listen to within your work, they will come. Even if it’s just one or two, then that is worth it. I feel I’m finally at a place where I can sit back and re-learn some things and actually look at the things I’ve made, the pile I’ve built. I’m learning to use the internet as the tool it is to pass emails to prospective clients or industry folk and to find ways in which to get my new web site some traffic. I have to take it a bit slow though because I only have so little time to actually make things that it’s hard to find the time to push that stuff into other areas. There aren’t enough hours in the day. Also, I definitely believe in getting the work to design competitions whether local organizations, national or world-wide. I recommend dumping as much stuff as you can every year, money-willing of course. People on the other end start to take notice and begin to look for you, which can turn to magazine editors leaving positive messages and emails, interested in your work. This can also lead to interviews and other special things. The work in magazines has been the most important for me as publishing can extend many world regions, gathering a lot of feedback. This can lead to book submissions and beyond. I’m not sure if I’m answering this question correctly. Marketing in other ways…? A design is a marketing tool. Though, a designer does play eye-grabber, a designer is not really a marketer, but I guess it helps a bit to know how to sell something? I had friends in college who studied marketing as well as design. But, it’s an area I’m not familiar with other than getting people to get excited for a musical group/sound/feeling/expression by way of poster, CD or logo design. It is marketing tool though, especially when working with a client. It certainly is not only what the designer can bring to the “product”, but you’re also working for somebody and trying to sell an image or an item and in the case of show posters, selling a venue or the place the poster is hanging or even the scene and city. I think this can be a tricky walk. I’ve been fortunate to have some success with great clients and great projects to where things work out lovely. I guess it helps that independent music graphics kinda start out in left field? Though, I don’t think that the work should limit itself. I think it’s great when the work speaks to anybody. There are times though where things don’t mix well, whether under the weather or client-wise or consumer. It’s just part of the deal. 09) Does any of your designs have an unforgettable story? This question has been asked a handful of times and it’s always answered the same way as this story is one that I won’t forget. I think that everything I make has a story to it. Whether it’s an unforgettable one in terms of production on my end, or one that is contained within the background of the piece internally, everything has a story. The “Whatever Makes You Happy” CD package design I made in June of 2002 for the band Elevator Division, is one of my most memorable moments, story-wise and design-wise. The following has been told so often for interviews, that I’ve now come to simply plug in a script that I’ve already spent time with to answer such a question. I don’t aim to cheapen this interview by including something that I gave for another, but here goes the story. It’s pretty whacky and ended up being one of the best things that I think I’ll ever make. It was a special run of 250 homemade CD packages for the band Elevator Division. I’ve had many projects that demand more production time than my little brain imagines, but this one was the worst. Actually, the finished piece is a lot tamer than my initial idea. Though, the final image’s concept, married to what the band was communicating on the disc inside, is way better. The idea came at the night I started printing. Well, actually it was spray paint. I had an image made for a month or more and then changed it at the last stroke of inspiration. It married the themes for the album “Whatever Makes You Happy” perfectly. With reflections of war and relationships in the songs, I made an image of a hand shooting off its index finger like a missile. It was the idea of shooting off one’s options and making decisions. It was aggressive, inviting, serious and humorous all in one. It was not only fitting for the band / music but also to the national / world agenda and climate. I went to war that night with many cans of spray paint and the idiot mind to do two-hundred and fifty, all in one massive sweep, and in my basement, which is something I will never do again because I could have died. I will probably also never be involved with another package like this again (take that back, I have been). Anyway, each one was hand-cut from cardboard and handmade stencil sprayed and rubber stamped. Inserts were cut, folded and glued. At the last mist of red spray a crack of thunder shook the massive turn-of-the-century home and I bolted from the basement and out the front door to a down poor fit for Noah himself. I was like a much less cool version of Dr. Frankenstein though. I leapt off the front porch and slid head first down the embankment and into the street turned river current. Like a taxidermy nightmare, I was born again. The drug dealing squatters of the home across the street were on their front step perch per usual summer evening, looking at the fire in my eyes and the red paint streaming from ears, nose and mouth. It was a high much higher than that of chemical substance. Well, maybe a three pack of design, life and paint fumes. -djg

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