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1. On your website, I noticed that you have black belt in martial arts. What form did you study? Do you continue to study? Why?
I was lucky enough to study in a school that was open to, and taught, just about everything. I am really a Jeet Kune Do Concepts martial artist. JKD is the martial art (and life) philosophy that Bruce Lee popularized. It is an eclectic mix of any and all martial arts. The belief is that everything has something to offer…so why not investigate as much as you can and see how they work. The result is that you blend the strongest of everything together and are not limited to a certain set style or way of moving. Specifically, the main arts I blended were: Kali, Arnis, Hapkido, Muay Thai, Silat, Kickboxing, Boxing, Shootwrestling, Brazilian Jujitsu, Judo, and many subcategories of these. Technically my black belts are in Hapkido and Arnis.
I haven’t actively studied for the past couple of years. I am still looking for a school or group of people that fit my martial art goals. I am also looking for the time to do it in.
I miss it incredibly.
2. How do you apply what you learned in martial arts to your graphic design work?
Very interesting question. I think anything you are passionate about, highly involved with, or very interested in will find it’s way into analogies for your other endeavors. The biggest translation would be the Jeet Kune Do philosophy. Because of this type of cross training in martial arts, you wind up learning from a more birdseye point of view. You stop thinking so much about the specifics of the style and move in more “meta” ways. It becomes more about studying Defensive and Offensive body motion instead of the Chinese way of motion or the Filipino way of motion. It’s much harder at first because it is so open-ended and diverse, but in the long run I think you come away able to do more and understand more. I’m very much the same way in design. I would consider myself a holistic designer. I’ve been asked by people in the past what specific design I do. Am I a Logo Designer or a Poster Designer or an Interactive Designer…as if I have to pigeonhole myself and do only 1 format/media in 1 style. My response is…”I’m a designer”. I don’t discriminate between a billboard, a t-shirt, or a touchscreen kiosk. I continue to design them all. And I never understood the notion of a single style that a designer works in. If I am creating an identity for a church today and a Punk band tomorrow, shouldn’t they look, feel, and think differently? The situation dictates the response. I let the visual need lead me. I study and do design, just like I study and do martial arts. I don’t only do “Logo Design” with a set style, just like I don’t do martial arts only in the Hapkido style.
3. Do you pursue any other interests outside graphic design? What do you pursue and why?
I’m interested in way too many things I can’t keep up. I really want more time to study music and languages and philosophy and psychology and photography…..and oh yeah, I want to spend time with my family and friends once in awhile too. My head is always on overload.
4. In your resume, you say that “graphic design is power, comprehension, and beauty.” How do you daily apply these concepts to your work?
Well, I try to. Like I said, it is very difficult to bring the design to the level of these statements when you have so little time on the piece. Those times when you can take a pile of unintelligible raw data and turn it into meaning, or encapsulate the essence of an organization in a perfectly clever way that makes a persons eyes light up, or visualize a concept in a way that gives someone chills, or make someone ponder in a way they otherwise wouldn’t have, or give someone an enriching experience…..that is when design has power, imparts comprehension, and has beauty.
The alphabet is a design. The U.S. highway signage system is a design. And I’ve seen some posters about War, Hunger, and AIDS that would make your heart stop with their beauty of idea and aesthetic. That is the kind of design that matters. That affects mankind. That is the kind of design I want to do.
5. How does your work affect your personal life?
It affects it tremendously. It is very hard to turn it off. For whatever reason it is on my mind quite a lot. I’ve heard musicians explain this phenomenon in similar ways. You tend to get almost depressed when you have creative block or, for whatever reason, aren’t able to do really good work. There is a drive inside that compels you to make this stuff. It’s like some need to constantly try and self-actualize. Fortunately I have family, friends, and a fiancé that understand it. But sometimes I really need them to smack me into perspective and remember that there is a whole life to lead out there…people to love, houses to buy, movies to see…
6. Many of the posters on your website developed out of specifically-themed poster contests. Though these themes influence your design choices, how do your experiences and beliefs influence those posters?
Everything you know, experience, and believe tempers how you approach those types of cultural/social/political posters. Often times you get a theme of something universal such as September 11. Well, what direction you go and what you say in your poster are always filtered though you as a person. Do you want to focus on how horrible it was so as to mark it as a day never to forget? Do you want to focus on the people who did their best to be heroic to show the spirit of the U.S.? Do you want to satirize Bin Laden? Do you want to vilify him? Do you want to pose a question of the viewers? Do you want to present the other sides point of view?
All those questions go through your personal filter and come out in a certain direction.
7. On the other hand, some of your posters were designed for personal events. Why do you choose this medium to document these events? What future life events do you see yourself designing for?
You know, I never really even think twice about documenting some of these events with this medium. I think it is just a natural way for me to contribute in a way that is uniquely mine (not that others can’t design to document as well) but this seems to be one of the ways that feels the most individually relevant for me. I feel a surreal sense of fulfillment when I do it-like I’m not wasting away, like I’m doing what I should be doing, like I’m giving back, like I’m pushing and growing. Like I’m doing “My Thing”. I imagine a musician feels the same way when they finish a song about their new love, or a director completes a movie documenting their parents life during the Holocaust.
I am in the middle of designing multiple pieces for my wedding on April 2. Monograms, program guides, menus, thank you cards, Just-Married posters…..
Does that count as designing for future life events?
