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Summer 2022 @ The Aesthetic Union
In 2022 I worked as the Printer's Devil (Design Intern) at the Aesthetic Union in San Francisco. The AU is a letterpress printshop founded in 2013 by artist James Tucker. The shop values preserving historical artistic ways of making, combining new technologies with old, and bringing a wealth of love for the handmade and the precision of craft to contemporary design projects.
Bumper Sticker Mockups
working on one of the presses
A traditional Printer's Devil role, once held by people like Benjamin Franklin, was given to adolescents as an apprenticeship for printing. My job had all the benefits of learning age old tasks like manual typesetting, press cleaning, and general shop chores with the added contemporary projects like creating merchandise and social media posts.
The highlight of the summer was designing several letter pressed zines. I researched and designed all the assets for the zines, like this printing diagram to the left, and handled everything from the layout to the ultimate printing of the work.
Much of the work stemmed from a mix of my curiosity about different kinds of printing, James' work, and the Whole Earth Catalog aesthetic.
Of course, I made lots of other fun and often weird designs for the shop.
I used rotoscope animation to create moving blue-print style designs of the presses, James and I sketched out some bumper stickers, and I set my own wood type for a final print at the end of my time at the shop during the summer.
My time at the shop cemented values I already had about design. My work is always playful, often made physically as well as digitally, and (hopefully) sometimes witty. Bringing back traditional elements of design and building in handcraft and humor into my work are all not only parts of my process, they're the reason I chose to be a designer and continue to make the work that I love making.
CalArts Projects 2020 - 2023
My graphic design MFA perfectly overlapped with the pandemic. My CalArts interview was March 15, 2020 - the day of the lockdown. I began school in fall of 2020, and graduated on May 12, 2023.
This is why my portfolio is a narrative. My work developed over the course of three years of uncertainty and social isolation and built upon artistic interests I've had all my life.
Here are 5 design projects from my MFA.
Lucida Type Specimen
Brief:
Design a type specimen for a historical font using a secondary related text.
60's Bar Menu
Brief:
Open concept: Explore Imagemaking
[60's Bar, dog theme, coasters, poster]
Pillow Talk Interactive Sculpture
Brief:
Design a format for multiple people to read together. [Relational Aesthetics]
Note: Using base concepts of first dates and a bed, as well as relational aesthetics concepts, I created a physical object and space that could be used to spark conversations. It was an early post-covid sculpture.
Fright Space Movie Poster
Brief:
Create a hypothetical design studio. Make a poster for it. [B-Movie theme]
Note: this project involved more photo editing and found imagery
than my typical bespoke illustrations. Images are sourced & edited.
Artmaking Booklet
Brief:
There was no brief. I made this for fun when I was burnt out from school.
[Pop-Inspired]
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