All representation is misrepresentation. Graphic designers are incapable of representing minoritarian positions: the people, attitudes, and ideas at the margins of power. To portray these, the designer must visualize the invisible, re-articulate minoritarian positions in the language of the dominant group. This action, in fact, flattens and obscures the marginal speech that the graphic designer intends to make visible.
In this project, I place the work of postcolonial thinker Gayatri Spivak in conversation with Jan Van Toorn and with Modernist graphic designers. I conclude that not even a critical, self-reflexive graphic design practice can address the issue of misrepresentation. Rather, this project offers non-representation as a solution. Graphic designers should not to visualize the invisible but instead to visually represent the absence of minoritarian speech. Two visual ways of marking absence are explored: the intentionally blank page, refigured as a space reserved for future speech; and the anti-collage, a layered disassemblage of existing visual material that evokes absence.
Here Be Monsters is a podcast created by and for people interested in pursuing their fears and facing the unknown. HBM is a member of KCRW’s independent producer project.
One of my favorite podcasts. Seriously, listen to it. And buy a shirt and a meat poster!
Fixxer is a web-based plugin that obscures gendered language across the internet. Because gendered langaguage is important and necessary in some contexts—as in the description of gender-based oppression—the words are revealed on hover. The necessity or triviality of gender in a text becomes evident.
Times Neutral Roman is a typeface programmed to replace gender-based language with an an unspecified marker (an X’d rectangle). TNR makes the writer aware of the use of gendered language, , which may be composed instinctively, without deliberation. If gender is central to the thesis of the work, then TNR presents formal opportunity. Could (and should all) gendered language announce itself? Intermixed fonts or written emphasis (**girl**) becomes strategies for maintaining gendered phrases with the text.
Melmoth is a font—or an archive in the form of a font. The upper case assembles letters from documents that regulated Oscar Wilde’s life. Together, the capitals bring together moments in which the state exercised control over homosexuals—they visualize that network of power that ultimately killed Wilde. The lowercase letters are taken from Wilde’s correspondence. Where the capitals illustrate public control, the lowercase embodies Wilde’s private life. This creates two registers within the font. Programmed OpenType features allow the font to force certain words (like Bosie, the name of Wilde’s lover) into a specific register, reclaiming Wilde’s life.
The Melmoth microsite allows users to write (and to view others') love letters. On idle, the microsite is slowly overlaid with kisses, a reference to Wilde’s tomb and (incriminating) love letters.
I was the Assistant Director of Marketing from 2016 to 2019 at Pacific University, in Forest Grove, OR.
I was responsible for graphic design, social media marketing, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Juicy Gothic is a typeface that I designed in 2019. It was inspired by “Plain Black,” a textura blackletter published in a 1832 Fann Street Foundry specimen book.
Below are spreads Juicy Gothic’s specimen book and posters highlighting features of some glyphs.
Typeface available for free upon request.
This book by Meghan Surges considers mass surveillance, administrative violence, and policing. As an alternative to these, Surges proposes “seeing and knowing from below,” the disclosure and dissemination of marginal knowledge.
In the book design, we explore methods for visually representing alternative, naive, or suppressed knowledge. Scans of worn, ink-stained photographs are preferred to crisp digital imagery. Broken specimens and incomplete projects occupy more space than the polished final pieces. Handwritten notes are of particular importance, suggesting non-professionalized and ephemeral deliberation. Scribbles on paper scraps or sketchy journal entries, these handwritten notes refuse legibility: they are often unreadable, fit untidily into the thesis narrative, and often brim with emotions—frustration, anger, and disappointment—that are flattened in the final, consumable art object.
The handwritten notes are juxtaposed against a digital aesthetic: pixel-based typography, low-resolution screen captures, JavaScript code. The digital reinforces the naivety of the handwriting; its inefficiency and irregularity. In turn, the handwriting exposes the distance of the digital. CCTV cameras and location promise insight, but we learn that omnipresent digital surveillance only reduces the human to a trackable token.
Yes Sequitur was a radio program, which ended in 2019. Every month, the program explored one niches of music from any time or place. Special attention is payed to under represented groups.
Yes Sequitur was a program of Hollow Earth Radio, a “non-commercial, DIY” radio station based in Seattle, WA. Learn more about Hollow Earth Radio.
AdamFe.in is a posthuman visual identity project.
The website receives biometric data from a body and then reconstructs the visual identity of the website to match the body’s state. For example, during sleep, the website darkens and contracts. A wearable haptic device allow the website to “talk back” to the body; for example, vibrating when a new user visits the website.
This project also envisions an internet where web pages adapt to a user’s current mood or physical state. For example, imagine WebMD simplifying it’s text when a paniced user accessed the Heimlich maneuver webpage.
This project explores: brand guidelines as autobiography; augmented reality in generative visual identities; the body as a mediating tool for identity systems; and the self-generation of digital identity.
The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) is one of the largest and longest running film festivals in the United States, with a full schedule of film programming outside of the festival season.
I interned at SIFF in 2016, producing ads and collateral to support the festival and year-round educational programming.
During the festival, SIFF employees and volunteers can see every festival film for free. I highly recommend it.
This poster is intended to provide information about microaggressions and their effects to an audience of college student, primarily graduate students.
It is also an exercise in ethical design practices. The poster's copy argues that microaggressions are harmful. As such, the poster is obliged to hide its examples and offer the user a choice to read or not to read the harmful microaggressions. The frame surrounding the title and informational copy is composed of nearly 300 microaggressions printed at below 4pt. A magnifying glass attached to the poster provides a comfortable method for reading.
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