My mission is to help others feel less alone. That’s what thoughtful communication ought to do.
I didn’t go to school for this. In college, I studied French comics as literature and obscure surrealist plays–yeah, I was that guy. Other than an Intro to Comp Sci class, all my technical and design skills were picked up in the course of working on the diverse projects I’ve taken on since, beginning one day with a poster for a show I was directing–which, as I recall, I designed late one night on a borrowed laptop with an ill-gotten copy of Photoshop.
(Dear Adobe, I’m legit now. I pay for Creative Cloud and everything. We cool? Love, Shawn)
That’s why I have a hard time labeling myself in the usual way–as an artist, designer, coder, writer… I think the role I play as a contributor should depend on the specific needs of the project, and not vice versa. Maybe it’s all the time I spent in theaters–nobody wants Hamlet showing up to the first act of The Man Who Came to Dinner, do they?
This is a mutually productive approach. From posters to brand marks to websites (and on!) I embrace each undertaking’s unique problems as an opportunity to learn and grow. And the solutions reached prove more roundly holistic than any square peg could achieve.
In a way, this way of working provides a long-sought entente between the two halves of my brain. As a little kid I wanted to be a scientist before I understood what science was. I entertained myself with imaginary inventions and chimerical chemistry experiments. I made blueprints for big wheel time machines and ridiculous potions out of houseplants.
Then I discovered stories, turning from science to fiction. (They say technology that’s sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from magic. Incidentally, I had a magic act for a while.) I binged on the likes of Adams, Bear and Card. I started writing, acting, directing. I drifted into the humanities.
But I never stopped analyzing things, searching for systematic understanding. And I came to the conclusion that creative disciplines are systems too, incantatory systems–structures of language ordered to generate an action/reaction, to make something happen. So I approach creative acts as collisions between the empiricist and the fantasist in me. I like that what amounts to an act of conjuring can lead to discoveries of how something–a medium, a system, a language–works.
Because design is engineering; art is technology; science is fiction. In short, creation is technical.
But I digress. For a more formal account of my experience, you can review my CV here. For the latest, follow my blog here.
And to check out my work, scroll on!